Quote from: estar;748791I don't see any difference in this regard.



I would say that if the spell was a fireball or lightning bolt and the Fighter failed his save. Then his right leg is charred to uselessness. You have use common sense the point is that massive damage cripples a body part if the saving throw is failed. What happens depends on the type of damage. For example if a fighter takes 20 points from a poison gas (spell, trap, etc) and fails his save and the result is his right leg. The character wakes up with his leg paralyzed and like a lost limb it needs a restoration spell to regain function.

I think if you run through the numbers you woudl be suprised at how often a fairly typical blow with chop off something.. As you level damage increases and getting hit by a spell/dragon/magic sword+specialistaion etc over your con will become common place as your con doesn't scale.
The save scales but typically increases by c1or 2 poitns every 3 levels or so for each class.

So at low level few opponents will be dealling more than 1/2 or full con in one blow in AD&D by 7th level this sort of damage will be common.
A 7th level fighter has a save vs death magic of 10. Nearly every blow a 7th level figther recieves will be c the 8-10 damage mark becuase they are fighting giants (hill giant 2d8 damage or weapon +7 depending on if you give them strength bonus or not), dragons etc monsters of that sort of type/level.
The net result is that something like a 1/4 of hits will result in the "useless" result and maybe as many as 1/8 will result in a broken leg, destroyed eye etc.

So the maths of the idea ends up with low level guys being unaffected (the damage required isn't typically dolled out by their foes and if it was they would be dead anyway) medium level guys being heavily affected and high level guys being moderately affected as nearly every hit would trigger the effect but saves woudl be easier.

All of this stands in stark contradiction to the Hit point paradigm. In order to make sense of HP you realy need to say that 8 point blow that would have killed a 1st level guy had been turned into a deep cut by the 4th level guy or a scratch by the 18th level guy due to their skill. Effectively a 4 point hit to 1st level guy with 8hp equates to a 20 hp blow to a 7th level guy with 40 hp.

So in short the only way you could use maiming would be in relation to going to lower than 0 HP. Using a save at that point to avoid a wound is a better approach and much simpler to adjudicate.

There is a "mortal wounds" system in ACKS that basically does this. The way it works is that a character goes down at 0 HP, but isn't necessarily dead. As soon as someone tries to treat them, rolls are made (d6 & d20) with modifiers (how far below 0, what kind of healing and how much, how long since you hit 0), with the results determining whether or not you suffer any long term injuries and the nature of them. Such injuries can potentially be mended through a 5th level divine spell. Light on bookkeeping, fast in play, and very flavourful. Characters do occasionally end up retiring due to accumulated injury, but that's the player's choice; from the player's perspective, it's hard to see this as worse than the character simply being dead.

As an adjunct to this system, there is also the "tampering with mortality" system for when a character attempts to treat those permanent injuries, or is brought back from the dead (with the same 5th level divine spell). Ill effects from tampering with mortality can only be alleviated through a Wish.

Again, personally I'm still unconvinced that this sort of detail would be necessary in 99% of D&D campaigns; it would have to be for something that went for very gritty combat.  maybe if I was running a D&D campaign of Game of Thrones...

I've been using the Splintered Shield/Shattered Weapon rule for a while now:

QuoteA shield or weapon may be sacrificed to nullify a successful attack. The shield or weapon is knocked from the defender's grasp. To determine is the item was destroyed roll a saving throw on the item save chart -preferably after the combat is over. Magical bonuses or penalties (if any) apply to the save.

I've also allowed PCs to lose armor and other items if as DM, I think it's plausible that the item might possibly deflect an attack. In one case, the PC was down to his last couple of hit points, had already lost his shield, and a hit was scored by an enemy fighter that would've killed him. The player asked if his PC could lose an arm instead. I thought about it and agreed. It seemed plausible that a desperate combatant might try to use his hands or arms to shield himself. I did make the character do a system shock roll to see if he passed out or was stunned by the wound. He fought on and from then on, he was known as Lefty.

The player enjoyed playing the one-armed fighter so much he passed up several chances to regenerate the lost arm.