Do you ever do this?

In a typical D&D game, your damage is expressed in abstract hit points; and its assumed that when your hp are back to full you are fully healed.

But have you ever done anything to express more specific injuries? That may cause specific penalties perhaps?

Also, what about dismemberment?  Have you had any PCs lose an eye, finger, hand, arm, leg?

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Had a PC in a game I was running lost a hand to a trap. Really spiced up the game. The PC went from a fairly generic hero type, went down an obsessive spiral trying to replace his hand, to borderline evil in striking a deal for a replacement with a devil cult.

I've toyed with using the WFRP crit system with basic D&D, rolling on the table when a PC is dropped to 0 rather than killing off a character.

For injuries, I was planning on leaving HPs as is. The injury lingers, even if you heal up to full. For most injuries, I was going to apply ad hoc rulings as befits that style of D&D, though some injuries could lead to ability score loss (broken leg might drop your Dex by 6 until it heals and halves speed, that sort of thing).

It definitely takes players with the right mindset. It worked for me in the past because the guys I was playing with didn't just whine when things went bad. They got creative and more into the game.

H&H has this optional rule:

QuoteInjury
Life as a surveyor is dangerous work, and few, if any, make it to retirement with*
out some significant scars. For those who want to better reflect the more long-term dangers
of adventuring, consider introducing permanent injuries.
Whenever a character is brought to 0 or fewer Hit Points and survives, he has
taken permanent injury, in the form of scars, deep-tissue damage, etc. Roll 1d6 and count
down the list of stats. The resulting stat is permanently reduced by 1. It is suggested that
some kind of in-character excuse be mapped to this, based on the attribute affected and
the source of the damage. For example, a character hit by a laser blast who lost 1 CHA
might have scarring on his face, while a character slashed with the claw of an ultratigris
and lost 1 DEX may have a torn ligament that reduces his agility.
For further danger, you may also introduce wound penalties during combat. For
every 1/4 threshold of Hit Points a character takes during combat, incur a -2 to the target
number of all rolls, whether to-hit, or checks.

anything more than that though, and I probably wouldn't bother. it just wouldn't fit the spirit of the rules.

I've experimented with this, didn't work.for.me. The PCs just take so much damage over time that they become bizarrely disabled.

ACKS has a Mortal Wounds table. When you drop to 0 HP, and then get healing, roll d6+d20. The latter roll is modified by how low you went, how promptly you get healing, if the healing is magic, and your Constitution.

Maybe you're dead-dead, maybe you're crippled, maybe you're slightly disfigured, maybe you're OK (after recovery time). The chance of being completely OK means an absolute reduction in lethality compared to stock OSR games.

There exists medium-level clerical magic to heal disfigurements (50% chance to find a caster in a town of 3000 people), but it has its own risks, and those grow slightly with repeated castings.

Quote from: Naburimannu;747694ACKS has a Mortal Wounds table. When you drop to 0 HP, and then get healing, roll d6+d20.

Came here to post this.

Also, because WFRP 2e so-called "crit tables" are actually "bad things that happen to you at 0 HP tables" (like ACKS' Mortal Wounds) you can use them pretty much as they are with just about any version of D&D for inflicting permanent injuries.

We've allways played HP as mostly stamina and the last bits as the meat, as per AD&D DMG.

But if something did a whole lot of physical damage all at once, usually like 1/2 the total HP then the player had to make a constitution check or suffer some setback. Broken bone, severe cut, and the character fought at a -1 penalty till they could be healed. Possibly leaving scars.

Vorpal and Sharpness swords and some monsters were problematic but rare. That was a permanent loss in fighting ability unless something was done to re-attatch or regenerate the limb.

I thought there were some rules in the DMG on this. But a quick glance through did not show anything.

Yes, but I use Wound Points* - basically when hit points run out, they start taking damage to wound points (which are based on the Con score) instead of dying or dealing with negative hit points, and those are actual, physical wounds.


* Although I borrowed it from Spycraft (and that got it from Star Wars d20), the concept actually first showed up in White Dwarf #15

I have in the past, but am unlikely to do so ever again, unless there is a need from the player side of things.

Mostly, because damage and weapons are so abstract that it doesn't really work well. The same goes for those old critical hit charts some people used--they just don't work well with the HP mechanic as written, and frankly if they did, some form of save would need to be implemented on top of the HP and that just starts stacking rules. I like Hit Points for their simplicity, I don't like them because of their degree of abstraction, and I've got to choose which is more appealing.

Usually I'll go with simplicity.

Only from something particularly nasty and expectedly egregious, like lava or over 50 HP in one blow, and even then it's mostly the province of below 0 but just above -10 HP.

Maiming can be played well for a campaign, but just like so many more advanced topics it really depends on whether your table can handle it. I tread lightly with it like I do internal party conflict, be upfront and know your players.

Used some pretty screwed up critical hit tables once upon a time because they looked neat but these days if I want a game with more simulation then I will just play that game instead.

Quote from: Planet Algol;747664I've experimented with this, didn't work.for.me. The PCs just take so much damage over time that they become bizarrely disabled.

Same experience added crit tables when I was 12 or so and within a week every PC was mangled and it was like being it a Vets hospital in a Oliver stone movie.
However Jonam of Ar a PC of this era went on to reach 10th level with a mechanical/magic arm.

When we changed hit points to the vitality/wounds (HP/6+con bonus) model about 20 years back a wound gave you -2/-10% and was written as an injury and rolled on a hit location (or selected at DM's interjection if it was more logical) if you got to 3 to a location it was broken. 6 to a location in one go and it was severed (but you were very likely dead so ...meh) . We kind of dropped that as well as it was just too much work to book keep.

Depends on the game but seldom have I used them

Did have my Gnome lose an arm in Temple of elemental evil. The trap plainly stated you are was hacked off by it.

Is my top funny moments in gaming story for what happened afterward.

Yep. For 2e and 3.x I had a critical injury system. Essentially,  if you ever took more than half of your remaining HP in a single blow, you had to make a saving throw or suffer an injury with game significant effects. (The astute will notice any hit that takes you below 0 automatically triggers this save.)

The nice thing about this system is that most damage rolls didn't invoke it, so balance and complexity of the fight weren't significantly impacted. Further,  the method to determine what actually happened used the saving throw result,  so there wasn't a lot of extra rolling to resolve it.

It was a nice system. If I ever ran Pathfinder,  I would use it again.

Quote from: Artifacts of Amber;747745Depends on the game but seldom have I used them

Did have my Gnome lose an arm in Temple of elemental evil. The trap plainly stated you are was hacked off by it.

Is my top funny moments in gaming story for what happened afterward.

Dude. You can't just say that and then NOT tell us what happened afterwards. That's kind of a jerk move.