Harbinger’s post about his system, his inclusion of wounds similar to A Song of Ice and Fire, and the discussion therein got me thinking about wound systems. I’m generally not a fan of them as a player, but I recognize their use in making a game grittier, and I’ve come up with a version before. This version is a little more based on my dislike of having to choose whether or not to take a wound to reduce damage, but still liking the idea of wounds reducing damage (thus making them less terrible for players than taking full damage and a wound). It’s also got some elements from critical hit tables. This probably works best for grittier games with relatively low HP totals, particularly something like D20 Modern.
Taking Wounds
A character takes a wound whenever hit points would be reduced to 0 or less by incoming damage. Optionally, a wound threshold might exist where any damage over a certain amount (e.g., half hit points or Con total) automatically results in a wound.
When you take a wound, halve the damage that triggered it. For example, if you take 19 points of damage and you have 12 HP remaining, take 9 damage and a wound (leaving you with 3 HP).
If the halved damage is still enough to reduce you to 0 or negative HP, you take the damage (and fall unconscious if you go under 0). However, there is no innate bleed out when at negative HP: if you don’t get a wound that causes bleeding, you are automatically stable at the negative HP total. You’ll still take wounds on any subsequent damage, and die at the normal negative total.
Effects of Wounds
Wounds are rolled on a chart based on damage type as described below. Each entry on the chart has four factors:
- The descriptive name of the wound
- The DC for treating and recovering from the wound
- The effect the wound has until it is treated
- The effect the wound has until it is fully healed (which stacks with the untreated effect on a fresh wound)
Wounds can have several types of effects:
- A penalty to one or more traits
- Bleeding
- Shock
- Standard effects (such as Staggered or Nauseated)
- Instant death
Most of those are self explanatory, but the two new or modified effects are Bleeding and Shock.
Bleeding is additional HP damage per round (which can never trigger additional wounds). Make a Heal check as a Standard action to slow the bleeding (DC at the DC of the wound; +5 for healing yourself) to per minute instead of per round. This is essentially just putting pressure on the wound, and it will resume bleeding at full speed if the character doesn’t Concentrate (giving up a move action to maintain pressure). See below for truly treating the wound. It is up to the GM (and based on how common magic is) to decide whether magical healing ends Bleeding.
Shock means that the character is Staggered and at -4 to all actions. The character takes one Con damage per minute until the condition is treated.
Treating and Recovering from Wounds
Treating a wound is a Heal check that requires an uninterrupted minute of work (the DC is the standard DC of the wound). The character also gets a Fort save against the same DC once every ten minutes if it remains untreated (which may be way too long for Bleeding and Shock, but is allowed if the character makes it ten minutes) to recover naturally.
Once per week, the character gets to try to recover from the lowest DC wound he or she currently has. This is a Fort save against the wound’s DC. If the character is under bed rest with healing, the attending physician can make a Heal check in place of the Fort save. If the character has multiple wounds, only one can be healed per week.
Spells like Restoration essentially give an instant Heal check or Fortitude save to the target (in addition to natural healing), and this overcomes the one-per-week rule (but usually only allows one per spell).
Example Wound Charts
To generate a result, roll 2d10, keep the lowest die, and add the total number of other wounds the character has (i.e., wounds get nastier the more wounded you already are).
Slashing Damage
Result | Wound | DC | Untreated Effect | Unrecovered Effect |
1-2 | Shallow Cut | 10 | Bleeding 1 | -1 Fort vs. infections and contact poisons |
3-5 | Leg Wound | 15 | Bleeding 1, -5 ft. Movement | -5 ft. Movement (stacks with Untreated) |
6-10 | Bleeding Wound | 20 | Bleeding 2 | -2 all actions (from pain) |
11+ | Severed Arm | 25 | Bleeding 3 | -4 all actions; even when recovered, the character is still missing the arm |
Piercing Damage
Result | Wound | DC | Untreated Effect | Unrecovered Effect |
1-2 | Flesh Wound | 10 | Bleeding 1 | -1 Fort vs. infections and contact poisons |
3-5 | Deep Gouge | 15 | Bleeding 2 | -2 all actions (from pain) |
6-10 | Torso Puncture | 20 | Bleeding 2, Shock | -3 all actions (from pain) |
11+ | Heart or Head | 25 | Bleeding 3, Shock, Instant Death without Fort save at the DC | -4 all actions |
Bludgeoning Damage
Result | Wound | DC | Untreated Effect | Unrecovered Effect |
1-2 | Bruised | 10 | -1 all actions (from pain) | None (just serves as a wound to recover before more serious wounds) |
3-5 | Broken Arm | 15 | -4 all actions (from pain) | -2 all actions with broken arm |
6-10 | Maimed | 20 | Bleeding 2 | -2 all actions (from pain) |
11+ | Crushed Skull | 25 | Unconscious until treated, Instant Death without Fort save at the DC | -4 all actions |
kversaw
Jan 20, 2014 @ 11:43:03
This system reminds me quite a bit of Riddle of Steel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Riddle_of_Steel. In that system there weren’t hit points at all and every successful strike you would roll on very similar wound tables to what you have here.
samhaine
Jan 20, 2014 @ 12:17:07
Yeah? I heard good things about RoS when it came out, but never got a chance to read it. It was fairly realistic and didn’t take too many strikes to kill someone, right? Rolling on a chart for every attack is probably fine in that circumstance, but it scares me for something that takes as many attacks to kill someone as D20 typically does 🙂 .
kversaw
Jan 20, 2014 @ 12:38:50
The way it worked was you had a dice pool that you used on offensive or defensive combat maneuvers. You might say “I’m going to slash with my sword to his face with 5 dice”. Your opponent would say “I would like to parry with 6 dice” you would roll off and compare success’s. If an attack got through it caused pain which would reduce your dice pool for the next turn, which put you at a huge disadvantage. Things would snowball pretty quickly from there.
In D20 where you are walking around with 120 HP it would be pretty ridiculous. I could imagine a Monty Python-ish Black Knight fight scene where you literally have to rip your opponent limb from limb to finally kill them.
Lloyd Neill
Dec 16, 2014 @ 05:50:54
I’m writing a series of blog posts on Death & Dismemberment Tables and have linked to yours in my latest post http://deathanddismemberment.blogspot.com.au/2014/12/death-dismemberment-tables-iii-just.html