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Jodjod 08-05-06, 01:14 AM

Taking Wound Damage The first time a character takes wound damage—even a single point—he becomes fatigued. A fatigued character can’t run or charge and takes a -2 penalty to Strength and Dexterity until he has rested for 8 hours (or until the wound damage is healed, if that occurs first). Additional wound damage doesn’t make the character exhausted. In addition, any time an attack deals wound damage to a character, he must succeed on a Fortitude saving throw (DC 5 + number of wound points lost from the attack) or be stunned for 1d4 rounds. (During that time, any other character can take a standard action to help the stunned character recover; doing so ends the stunned condition.) 0 Wound Points At 0 wound points, a character is disabled. A disabled character is conscious, but can only take a single move or standard action each turn (but not both, nor can she take full-round actions). She moves at half speed. Taking move actions doesn’t risk further injury, but performing any standard action (or any other action the GM deems strenuous, including some free actions such as casting a quickened spell) worsens your conditions and you take 1 point of wound damage after completing the act. Unless your activity increased your hit points, you are now at -1 hit points, and you’re dying. Dying Dying (-1 to -9 Wound Points) When your character’s current wound points drop to between -1 and -9 inclusive, he’s dying. A dying character immediately falls unconscious and can take no actions. A dying character loses 1 wound point every round. This continues until the character dies or becomes stable (see below). Dead (See Text) When your character’s current wound points drop to your negative constitution score or lower, or if he takes massive damage, he’s dead. A character can also die from taking ability damage or suffering an ability drain that reduces his Constitution to 0. Stable Characters and Recovery A stable character is unconscious. Every hour, a stable character must succeed on a Fortitude save (DC 15, +1 per hour after the first) to remain stable. If the character fails the save, he loses 1 wound point. (A character who’s unconscious or dying can’t use any special action that changes the initiative count on which his action occurs.) If the character’s hit points drop to -10 or lower, he’s dead. If any sort of healing cures the dying character of even 1 point of damage, he stops losing hit points and becomes stable. Healing that raises the dying character’s wound points to 0 makes him conscious and disabled. Healing that raises his wound points to 1 or more makes him fully functional (albeit fatigued) just as if he’d never been reduced to 0 or lower. A spellcaster retains the spellcasting capability she had before dropping below 0 hit points. A stable character who has been tended by a healer or who has been magically healed eventually regains consciousness and recovers hit points naturally. If the character has no one to tend him, however, his life is still in danger, and he may yet slip away. If the character succeeds on the save by less than 5, he does not get any worse, but does not improve. He is still stable and unconscious, and must continue to make Fortitude saves every hour. If the character succeeds on the save by 5 or more, he becomes conscious and disabled. An unaided stable, conscious character at 0 wound points has a 10% chance to start recovering wound points naturally that day. Once an unaided character starts recovering wound points naturally, he is no longer in danger of dying. If you ever sustain a single attack deals 50 (-/+ 10 per size category smaller/bigger than medium) points of damage or more and it doesn’t kill you outright, you must make a DC 15 Fortitude save. If this saving throw fails, you die regardless of your current hit points. If you take 50 points of damage or more from multiple attacks, no one of which dealt 50 or more points of damage itself, the massive damage rule does not apply. Magical Healing And Damage Spells that heal or deal damage work somewhat differently in this system. For spells that heal or deal damage a variable amount of hit point damage based on a die roll (such as cure light wounds or fireball), apply the actual die roll as restored vitality points, and any modifier to the die roll (such as caster level, for cure spells) as restored or damaged wound points. For example, cure moderate wounds heals 2d8 points of damage, +1 point per caster level (maximum +10). Under this system, a 10th level cleric could cast it to heal 2d8 vitality points and 10 wound points. On the other hand, fireball damages hit points. A fireball cast by a 6th level wizard would deal 6d6 of damage to a character’s vitality points. Because it does not have a modifier it would not deal any damage to the character’s wound points, unless it had managed to first lower the character’s vitality points to zero. Spells or effects that return a number of hit points not based on a die roll, such as heal, apply the healing to lost wound points first, then to lost vitality. For example, an 11th-level cleric casting heal has 110 points of healing to apply. If the target has taken 12 points of wound damage and 104 points of vitality damage, the spell heals all the wound damage and 98 points of the vitality damage, leaving the target with only 6 points of vitality damage remaining. Damaging spells or effects not based on a die roll deal damage to vitality points, only dealing damage to a character’s wound points after their vitality points have been reduced to zero. What It Boils Down To No more Fortitude-Saves-Or-Die. Use a pretty much identical Dying system as with Hit Points (substituing HP for WP). Massive Damage is still in use, albeit altered. Clarifying and revising certain aspects of how magic effects wound/vitality points. Thoughts?