Closed Discussion: Wounds

[Maiyannah]

This is a secondary discussion which came up discussing the Bleedout mechanic.

One third-party campaign setting I had a campaign in had a mechanic whereby if you reached -8 or lower in bleedout, you would gain a lasting wound, which had a penalty associated with it, and a cure spell or heal DC needed to rectify it.

Death had a chance on raise or resurrect to clear it them: 25% chance for Raise, 50% for Resurrect. True Ressurection always brings the person back whole (at significant costs).

The possible maluses were:

Concussion, Int -1, Heal 20 or Lesser Restoration
Damaged eyes, Spot -10, heal 25 or Remove Blindness/Deafness
Tinnitus, Listen -10, heal 25 or Remove Blindness/Deafness
Broken Arm, AB -5, heal 30 or Restoration
Broken Leg, Movement speed halved, heal 30 or Restoration
Broken Back, Carry weight halved, heal 40 or Heal
Shattered Constitution, Con -3, heal 50 or Greater Restoration

I don't neccesarialy agree with some of the actual examples here, which I'm just reproducing from this campaign setting, but it gives a starting point for the kind of thing we mean. I'm sure we can collectively come up with some more interesting maluses.

As far as implementing them, I would create a d% table when we agree on specific wounds, and have it roll versus that. if you roll the same thing twice, I would consider that the second wound is discarded. Lucky you, you got a freebie.

Wounds in this setting were rolled versus a Fort DC 25 at -8 at bleedout, and then rolled on a D% 25 or 50 chance when raised. They were not restored if you were merely healed to stabilize and recover you.

[Ouroboros]

This seems like a novel system worth implementing to make characters both feel more grounded and vulnerable within the world, while also opening the doors to more healer-centric characters having higher value.

As an aside, it also made me think of a system where every time someone is crit they take a different kind of wound that inflicts, say, -1 maximum HP until they are healed via actual medical attention, to stop people just facetanking with a potion stock of 500 healing potions.

[Maiyannah]

This seems like a novel system worth implementing to make characters both feel more grounded and vulnerable within the world, while also opening the doors to more healer-centric characters having higher value.

I agree, hence suggesting it, though I think I'd try to come up with some better and more inventive ideas for what the actual wounds are.

As an aside, it also made me think of a system where every time someone is crit they take a different kind of wound that inflicts, say, -1 maximum HP until they are healed via actual medical attention, to stop people just facetanking with a potion stock of 500 healing potions.

In principle I agree with this, but NWN's RNG is so bullshit and cooked that I feel like this is just going to punish players for the fact that Bioware couldn't make a proper RNG algorithm.

[Ouroboros]

NWN 1 has some weird weighted dice system where the larger the gap between Challenge Ratings the more likely the underdog is to crit, if it's an NPC. It's why if you're a level 20 surrounded by a swarm of 20 rats, you will get crit probably 5 times per round. At least, that's how it works in my experience. This is less of an issue for characters going against equal or greater challenges relative to their level and sort of discourages high levels from slumming it in low level content, in a way.

[Maiyannah]

NWN 1 has some weird weighted dice system where the larger the gap between Challenge Ratings the more likely the underdog is to crit, if it's an NPC. It's why if you're a level 20 surrounded by a swarm of 20 rats, you will get crit probably 5 times per round. At least, that's how it works in my experience.

Right, so unless we can overcome this (not sure?) the end result is if you're a level 30 fighting a rodent of unusual size, you're going to get maimed, but you can mulch pit fiends. Not ... really the kind of vibe I'd go for, personally.

[Ouroboros]

Personally I think it counters the 3.x issue of low level threats becoming irrelevant due to mechanics. You get bizarre scenarios where, say, a level 1 Rogue sneaks up on the level 20 Barbarian and puts a knife to their throat; common sense dictates this is a life or death scenario, but mechanics dictates that the dagger does 1d4 damage and you have 200~ HP so you can ignore it.

A massive tide of hungry rats remains as threatening to a person no matter what. Not to mention the indirect encouragement to seek harder challenges rather than get your HP whittled down by low level enemies.

[Maiyannah]

Well to me, the thing is we cannot have a system that doesn't reward experience if every encounter is threatening; you either have some non-threatening encounters which reward nothing, or you have threatening encounters that at least give you something.

The problem with the latter approach is it greatly enables farming, so both have their merits and costs.

[wilkins1952]

Yeah I think that any wounds system should be temporary. I.E Resting removes it otherwise you could end up with a situation where a PC is miserable to play just because of the aformentioned issues with Beamdog RNG. As for dealing with threats becoming trivial at a certain point don't think there is any easy solution here other than just accepting it as a quirk of NWN and trying to have High and Low level areas next to each other so at least the theme of the area can be explored by anyone at any level.

[Maiyannah]

Basically my idea is it persists until either:

A] a certain amount of time passes (natural healing)
B] they or another treating them rolls vs a certain Healing DC and prevails
C] they or another treating them casts a certain appropriate spell on them.

I don't neccesarialy like it just popping on rest since that's not a terribly long interval sometimes, though as a compromise maybe we can have rest reduce the timer.

[Maiyannah]

Folding this into discussion of Downed/Death penalties here: viewtopic.php?p=537#p537