This is suppose to be a system to give potentially lasting injuries that are not healed by surges and powers, using the disease rules.
If you drop below 0 hit points and fail 1 death save then you are afflicted with an injury at stage 1. If you fail two death saves then you are afflicted at stage 2.
Stage 0: You recover from the injury
Stage 1: You take a -1 to all d20 rolls and to speed.
Stage 2: You take a -2 to all d20 rolls and to speed.
Stage 3: You take a -5 to all d20 rolls and are slowed.
Stage 4: You take a -10 to all d20 rolls and are immobolized.
Stage 5: You die.
Check: After each extended rest you make an endurance check. If you succeed against the hard DC of the level of the monster that inflicted the injury then you improve one stage. If you succeed against a moderate DC then you maintain your stage. Otherwise you move to the next stage.
Cure disease completely heals the injury.
Also there's no option for a healer to take over, like with other diseases?
Personally I wouldn't really enjoy this... a -1 or -2 to all checks is really annoying and generally going to make people stop adventuring until they are healed, and it's likely to get people killed even faster.
The odds of a random character succesfully passing a Hard Endurance DC is very minimal. Most characters would need to roll at least a 16 or 17 to pass one since they probably have poor Con and no training in it.
I would expect most people would need the Ritual to recover or . . .
Also there's no option for a healer to take over, like with other diseases?
Yes, I forgot in include this part. A heal check can be used in place of an endurance check. So a trained healer can be a big asset to the party.
Not so much "big asset" as much as "required to survive". Anyone with a Con of 12 or lower who gets even a minor injury with this system is most likely going to die without help from his friends.
Fixed.
Unless one of his friends is a dedicated healer he's still going to die.
Trained healer or ritual caster (or can afford to pay an NPC to cast the ritual).
This shouldn't come into play that much. At least in my games I don't have PCs dropping in every fight.
IMO it adds an iota of "realism" for those that want it - i.e. PCs who are injured will likely stop to get healing assitance or rituals. For some people, including players, this kind of house rule adds to the immersion. However, remember, if you add it, you also need to add more possible rest points, or other small balancing mechanisms.
4E did away with this, because for every injury mechanism you need a healing mechanism, and if you take it as a game it ends up being counter to the immersion that's sought, because basically PCs in D&D fight *all the time*, which is not at all realistic of itself - showing any "realistic" healing associated with this just tends to show up how unreal all the bashing heads actually is.
The penalties beyond -2 are pointless. No player is going to have their character do much of anything at -5 to all rolls. The idea of playing through an hour of combat with that penalty to everything really does not appeal. You'd be better off having the PC officially inactive due to injury at that stage, and as DM have something figured out for the player to do since they could not (roll) play the character. Some play styles will work fine with a bed-ridden hero character, but it's not for general use that's for certain.
And I do have PCs dropping in every fight, so it differs across groups. If they hardly ever go down I don't really see the point of these rules.
Actually Cure Disease has the potential of killing the character as well if you're not a trained healer, so that's really your only option.
True.
And I do have PCs dropping in every fight, so it differs across groups.
In that case I can see your dislike of this system
If they hardly ever go down I don't really see the point of these rules.
Fear of dropping below zero.
My players don't fear it that much, which is why it happens.They do fear being Couped though. Or failing a death save.
Actually Cure Disease has the potential of killing the character as well if you're not a trained healer, so that's really your only option.
And I do have PCs dropping in every fight, so it differs across groups. If they hardly ever go down I don't really see the point of these rules.
Cure Disease can kill someone even if they are trained in Heal, trust me...hehe yeah...fun times...
Have you thought of saying, you're injured if you take 1/4 you hp in a single hit. So if a troll hit you in the chest with an hammer so hard you lost 12 of your 48 hp, that might break a few ribs, or break your leg.
No you would want to look at 1/4 or 1/2 see which works as you don't want it happening often. It should be a really big deal. But I think having it just something that happens from death, its not really an injury is a recovery period.
This is suppose to be a system to give potentially lasting injuries that are not healed by surges and powers, using the disease rules.
If you drop below 0 hit points and fail 1 death save then you are afflicted with an injury at stage 1. If you fail two death saves then you are afflicted at stage 2.
Stage 0: You recover from the injury
Stage 1: You take a -1 to all d20 rolls and to speed.
Stage 2: You take a -2 to all d20 rolls and to speed.
Stage 3: You take a -5 to all d20 rolls and are slowed.
Stage 4: You take a -10 to all d20 rolls and are immobolized.
Stage 5: You die.
Check: After each extended rest you make an endurance check. If you succeed against the hard DC of the level of the monster that inflicted the injury then you improve one stage. If you succeed against a moderate DC then you maintain your stage. Otherwise you move to the next stage.
Cure disease completely heals the injury.
I like this idea to make 4E grittier, however I would suggest not penalising d20 rolls across the board. So much in 4E depends on landing your attacks, it really is a huge penalty. Instead I would assign the PC penalties to static things like healing surges, Speed, max HPs, AC, Fort, Refx, Will and so on. I also would use the suggested DCs for diseases from the Rules Compendium.
Here's what I came up with offa the toppa:
Infected Wounds Variable Level Disease
That nasty cut the Bugbear gave you got infected, and now your side feels like it is on fire.
Stage 0: The target recovers from the disease
Stage 1: While affected by stage 1, the target's max HPs are reduced by 5 (per tier). This affects their bloodied value and surge value. You could also simply reduce max surges by 1. You could also impose a speed penalty.
Stage 2: While affected by stage 2, the target's max HPs are reduced a further 5 (per tier) and the target takes a -2 penalty to Reflex and Fortitude. You could also impose a speed penalty.
Stage 3: While affected by stage 3, the target can not regain hit points and takes a -2 penalty to all defenses. You could also impose a speed penalty.
Check: At the end of each extended rest, the target makes an endurance check in stage 1 or 2. The Endurance (or Heal) DCs are determined by the level of the monster that inflicted the wound or the DM can simply assign them.
Moderate DC or better: recovery! Improve 1 stage
Easy DC: no improvement
Lower than Easy: worsens! Gain 1 stage. At the DMs option a particulary nasty infection can kill the PC who is at Stage 3 and gets this result (recommended for late heroic tier or later only)
Infection: characters reduced to 0 hps in an encounter make a saving throw, if they fail then they have Infected Wounds at stage 1. Certain monster attack powers and rituals might also induce Infected Wounds on their victims (spread like a regular disease)
I would like this a lot more with a different trigger perhaps... a lot of little cuts over time could kill me, but not provide an "injury" much like psycic damage can kill me but not provide an "injury" also it comes then as just another effect of droping below 0 with no real newness to it, in my opinion.
Have you thought of saying, you're injured if you take 1/4 you hp in a single hit. So if a troll hit you in the chest with an hammer so hard you lost 12 of your 48 hp, that might break a few ribs, or break your leg.
No you would want to look at 1/4 or 1/2 see which works as you don't want it happening often. It should be a really big deal. But I think having it just something that happens from death, its not really an injury is a recovery period.
Good thoughts. I kind of like the 1/2 hp thing. Taking a page from the Song of Ice and Fire RPG you could decide to take an injury to cancel out an attack. Hmm, I will ave to give some thought to these.
I think this would be better if when you take a hit that puts you below 0 the character can make an immediate saving throw. That saving throw determines whether the character is infected or not. Perhaps even make it an attack (like poisons) against fortitude (level +5). Making it an attack means a DM can avoid making a pissed-off player go crazy and ruin the game for everybody else.
While I applaud your willingness to experiment with the disease track (something I think is one of the best new mechanics of 4th edition), I don't think this particular application is very good.
First, injuries in general only make the game harder to play. An injured player is effectively a level or two behind his party, as his attack rolls are lower. To say nothing of the fact that the check to improve the injury is also affected by the injury, making it virtually impossible to heal on your own. While that is realistic, D&D is often not, and this is a good example of why it often shouldn't be.
Second, while some games end up with death being a mere nuisance or vague threat, other games have death being a serious consequence that needs to be avoided. This pushes games of the latter type to turn into games of the former type. Death from injury will push players to adopt tactics that prevent them from ever even dropping below 0, and the feedback the DM will get will reflect this, they won't want to risk it. This system would narrow the "sweet spot" of the impact of death on the game, which makes it harder for the group to find a style of play and combat that they enjoy.
It feels like this is trying to solve a problem that doesn't need to exist. It feels like you're implementing this because, for whatever reason, death doesn't seem like a very big threat to your group. If that is the logic behind this, there are other, better solutions to that problem. As a mechanic, this makes the game much more swingy, where a PC can, in one fight, go from being fairly good to lagging behind the group, and if said player drops in the first fight (something you said is incredibly rare in your game, but less common in many others) and has a couple of bad rolls. That player is now sucky for an entire day, unless the PCs backtrack and put their plans on hold to address the injured character. Ticking-clock situations makes the latter option invalid, and the striker who got injured is now barely able to contribute meaningfully to the group, increasing the liklihood of other characters getting injured.
All in all, good experiment, bad results.
To say nothing of the fact that the check to improve the injury is also affected by the injury, making it virtually impossible to heal on your own.
I did mean to say that the injury check roll would not be affected by the penalty. Good catch.
Thanks to everyone for the continued feedback. Still mullling this one over.
Good thoughts. I kind of like the 1/2 hp thing. Taking a page from the Song of Ice and Fire RPG you could decide to take an injury to cancel out an attack. Hmm, I will ave to give some thought to these.
Really I had thought that could make the basis for a great cinematic rule for 4e... the injury would cause a normal but recuring impairment... the wound is agrefated and the impairment recurs on the first roll you make in a round that is 1-2 or 19-20. (representing poor performance or over extending respectively)
And impairment example might be leg wound prone,with slowed save ends (slowed save ends recurs )
Remove Affliction or a specialized Remove Wound (or a unlikely to be ever used time recouping) then removes the leg wound of course.