Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 blade_darkslayer Sep 04, 2009 20:43:33	So, there are a bunch of things in the 3rd edition rulebooks that suggest that losing a limb during combat is a possibility. The regeneration ability mentions it, and several healing spells specify that they are either good enough or not good enough to regrow lost limbs. Is there an offical ruling in any edition on when limbs are lost and how it effects the character? I thought there was something about disfiguring injury in The Book of Vile Darkness, but even though it has some statistics regarding voluntary disfigurement under feats, they are all weird, magical disfigurements. I think second edition had some kind of rule about loosing limbs and things on critical hits, (perhaps a table of some kind?) but I don't have the books on hand and it would require some work to convert things from 2nd to 3rd editions anyway. I considered making a homebrew table of my own to roll on criticals where you would roll a D20 and 1-15 would be a normal crit but 16-20 would be (16) a disfiguring scar (17)loss of an eye (18) loss of a hand or arm (20) loss of a foot or leg. It seems like a pretty logical way to handle aquiring such an injury, but how would they opperate? I feel like I read somewhere what the modifier on spot checks is for a character with one eye and what the speed is for a medium and small characters with one leg, but what about the hand? Do you just loose ability score points on dexterity? What if it was you off-hand and you never used it in combat anyway? Also, your dexterity bonus effects your armor class. Why would your ability to dodge an attack go down if you lost a hand? It seems like determining things skill by skill would be even more trouble. In short, my questions are: 1.) Are there any offical rules regarding loss of body parts? 2.) If there aren't, can anyone think of any?
#2 Sinasilver Sep 04, 2009 21:09:46	Back in first edition, some powerful monsters has "Withering Ray"s etc.. They dealt X damage or withered a limb into nothing etc. Depending on how the DM chose ot use it. But i'm not familiar with any rules for limb loss since then. As for limb damages, I'd take a page out of Cyberpunk and modify it slightly. When they score a critical roll a D10. 1 is a head shot, 2-4 is torso, 5 is right arm, 6 is left arm, 7-8 is right leg, 9-10 is left leg. The next part is a little tricky depending on edition. For fourth edition, I'd simply declare if damage taken exceeds constitution, the limb is lost(or horribly disfigured in the case of a torso.. Unless you want the sort of comic bookey "Torso hit so hard it flies away and the limbs spin in the air momentarily before falling to the ground" deal". Damage lower than the threshold is normal and/or disfigure ment. Of course how you want to handle lost heads is up to you.. To remain within the spirit of 4ed, I'd probably only allow them to be horribly difigured.. But in 3ed.. Go ahead and instantly kill them. Plenty of things to, and it's just how things go.
#3 anubis_reynard Sep 05, 2009 0:33:44	Actually, I'd suggest using the 4E Disease Track system to keep track of crippling injuries. Something like this:   "Broken Leg:" hairline fracture: -1 speed, lose a healing surge when you run. Clean break: Slowed, lose a healing surge when you run. debilitating break: Slowed, lose a healing surge when you take a move action Limb loss- Cannot use limb. Standing requires a DC 10 acrobatics check, modified by circomstances. Cannot walk or run. Check every 2 weeks, or when magical aid is applied. DC (10) to remain stable, DC 15 to improve a grade   Something similar for arms, and possibly head injuries, would work wonderfully.   An attack will put you at a level, and
#4 blade_darkslayer Sep 05, 2009 1:20:40	Well, I'm not sure how often a PC with one leg would be trying to stand unassited or whether it would make much of a difference in an adventure. More practical concerns would be things like how does having peg leg effect ... a PC's base speed? a balance check? (While standing on a narrow ledge for instance.) a climb check? a jump check? a move silently check? a disguise check? Also, what about characters who have gotten used to a missing limb, like Long John Silver in Treasure Island? He is described as being very nimble on his wooden leg. Maybe you can take proficiency with a peg leg like you can with a weapon?
#5 anubis_reynard Sep 05, 2009 1:24:47	A peg leg would simply be fluff for moving back up the condition track. Get proficent enough in it, and you have no penalty at all!   but I agree, throwing on some Athleticcs penalties would be appropriate.
#6 erk_ Sep 06, 2009 12:33:02	...loosing a limb during combat is a possibility. It is, but most experienced warriors should do their limbering up before combat. 1.) Are there any offical rules regarding loss of body parts? Aaaaah, losing a limb. I see. Sorry, I am not usually a grammar nazi, but we all have our causes to uphold. Carry on.
#7 blade_darkslayer Sep 06, 2009 18:56:33	Very funny, Erk. If only your knowlege of D&D rules systems was equal to your commitment to finding typos.
#8 bone_naga Sep 07, 2009 11:05:53	In 3e there were no WotC rules on that matter, but there was a book called Torn Asunder that covered critical hits. In 2e, Swords of Sharpness could sever limbs on a 20 (they were basically a weaker version of Vorpal weapons). Personally, I used the 2e Player's Option: Combat and Tactics rules for many years (only abandoning them recently because my current 4e group does not like them). It wouldn't even require much converting, as most of the stuff can be directly ported to 3e, and even a 4e conversion wouldn't take much work. Basically, if you rolled a crit, the target could make a saving throw (in 4e, make it a normal saving throw, in 3e I would suggest a Fortitude save although I'm not sure what DC to set it at). If the save was successful, he took the extra damage, but nothing else. If the save failed, then you rolled for location and severity of the crit, with effects like severing limbs, crushing bones, etc. The roll was modified by the weapon size, and many effects were lessened if the target was wearing armor. It even had rules for recovery and interaction with various healing spells. Generally, a certain number of HP had to be healed in order for the effect to be removed. Sometimes a Regeneration spell was required. Player's Option: Spells and Magic expanded on this by including critical hit rules for spells (if the spell didn't have an attack roll, it usually critted if the target rolled a 1 on his save), and also included several new spells, some of which I believe were geared towards healing critical hit effects.
#9 dragonsblood Sep 07, 2009 15:28:40	It's best to keep disfigurements to dramatic moments, not random criticals. Losing a limb can be as bad as losing a character (unless you're a hardcore roleplayer I suppose). A missing arm completely neutralizes an archer. A missing leg halves the capacity of a charging barbarian. If a PC gets such an injury, they'll likely just want to start over with a new character if it's too harsh. A good time for such a dramatic moment would be when a character would otherwise die. A rival NPC enjoys the rivalry so much that he doesn't want to kill a PC, and instead cleaves a hand off as a momento. A PC falls off a 100' cliff and shatters a leg, requiring amputation. A magical blast to the face that should've killed the PC instead melts an eye and half of his face. There should also be ways to restore the PC back to health. Depending on the campaign and situation, you could make this a difficult quest for a magical potion, or as simple as paying a cleric in town (comparable to the cost of a Raise Dead ritual).
#10 Alycat Sep 08, 2009 3:42:29	As Dragonsblood points out, various forms of injury can hamper a character to such a degree that the player might not enjoy playing that character anymore. If it's impossible to restore, rolling up a new character might be very tempting. And even if the players can restore it between adventures, that character is basically taken out of the race for the rest of that dungeon run. If the players are able to heal the injuries between fights, it merely becomes a nasty penalty during fights and a resource sink out of combat. Greivous injuries are better reserved as plot devices or for character concepts. You could have a Last War Veteran in Eberron who only has one arm, but he's so strong and determined he learned how to swing his greataxe/fullblade/whatever in one hand, and he similarly overcomes physical obstacles with little to no difficulty simply because he's used to only having one arm by now. In other words, simply change the fluff to fit your concept or ideas. If you start reworking the mechanics, carefully consider the consequences - both wanted and unwanted - and make up with yourself if it's worth it.
#11 Damon_Tor Sep 08, 2009 12:40:18	Part of the problem is how easy it is to heal people: there's no good reason a cleric couldn't pray for a limb to regrow as a part of a Heal Major Wounds prayer. One situation where there's an exeption is when the gods would actually prevent such healing from occurring.  Case-in-point, a character in a game of mine was asked for a sacrifice to access a tomb to take the treasure within.  She chose to cut off her finger.  The god's wouldn't regrow a finger that was lost in a sacrifice, because if they did, what was the point of the sacrifice.
#12 1shmael Sep 10, 2009 10:30:10	...there's no good reason a cleric couldn't pray for a limb to regrow as a part of a Heal Major Wounds prayer. Whether the gods *can* regenerate limbs is rather a theological question now, isn't it? It's rather impressive how rarely that sort of thing happens in classic fantasy and religious literature. Very rarely do magical persons in our own mythology have the power to regenerate missing body parts. More typically, they heal what remains -- which parallels natural human healing ability.
#13 slobo777a Sep 10, 2009 14:50:08	Whether the gods *can* regenerate limbs is rather a theological question now, isn't it? It's rather impressive how rarely that sort of thing happens in classic fantasy and religious literature. Very rarely do magical persons in our own mythology have the power to regenerate missing body parts. More typically, they heal what remains -- which parallels natural human healing ability.   Generally a good reason to not remove them (from PCs against their players' will at least) in the first place, if you are trying to create fantasy stories "like the books or movies". I really loved Rune Quest when it first came out. My players quickly came up with the nickname "Limb Quest" - for some reason it was nearly always the left leg that got removed from some poor PC eventually . . .
#14 Sinasilver Sep 12, 2009 1:34:27	I really loved Rune Quest when it first came out. My players quickly came up with the nickname "Limb Quest" - for some reason it was nearly always the left leg that got removed from some poor PC eventually . . . Off topic.. Sort of. In Cyberpunk2020, we used to pay extra money to double-up on the ceramic inserts for our left leg's armor in order to keep it from being blown off on a regular basis... Left leg armor and a Helmet with a face mask were the only two things that REALLY seemed to be required to not die in that game.
#15 matthewswift Sep 12, 2009 2:14:40	If a player in a campaign I run dies in a combat, I let them have the option to lose an arm instead, to keep the character, though they lose whatever action points they had at the time. It explains why they were down for the count. The action point tax is to simulate their massive trauma in the next encounter. After that, their heroic efforts let them keep trucking. They pretty much lose a weapon item slot, but get to keep the character, and previous AC. I only use this for either really short, or very long campaigns.