A Better Injury System?

[BigRedRod]

In my eyes D&D has a few major problems and has kept most of them through the years up into the latest generation. Luckily, a fair amount of these problems were dropped when the designers took D&D 3.5 and made d20 modern out of it. Sadly, the same abstract injury system remained.

For a project, I'm looking for something which will mesh with d20 Modern (and to a lesser extent the few bits and pieces presented in d20 past) to create a rather more realistic injury system.

Guns kill people, wounds take a long time to heal and people aren't just a homogenous mass but have distinct body parts.

Idea 1: Better Criticals

The obvious method is to keep things pretty much as they are but change criticals from simply a method of dealing extra damage to a method of dealing an injury with some kind of ingame effect. Torn Asunder is, I gather, a sourcebook aimed at D&D which does just this.

It's not perfect by any means, but it might be a good compromise between over realistic constant player deaths and the standard abstracted method.

It would, however, involve me picking up another sourcebook or attemtping to match it with my own ingenuity (a project I may not actually have time for).

Idea 2: Locational HP and Progressive injuries

The idea which I favour, perhaps foolishly, is to divide the hp of a character between the various body parts and track them independently (so a human would have say head, torso, left arm, right arm, left leg, right leg) each with their own HP.

Damage strikes a randomly determined location (based on size) or would be targeted at a single location (with a penalty based on the size of the location).

We have four levels of health for each body part:
Green
Amber
Red
Black

Green being from full to 3/4 HP (a few scrapes)
Amber from 3/4 to 1/4 (significant damage)
Red 0 to 1/4 (heavy damage)
Black being 0 (dead)

Green would have no penalty, amber a slightly penalty (say a -4 to all checks involving that part of the body), red a heavy penalty (-8 to all checks) and black would signal the body part has been destroyed (which would mean death in the case of head or torso and make the part unusable in the case of the rest).

Anything except green would also gradually get worse if not treated. So that a bullet lodged in an arm could result in the loss of the arm unless it was treated in a reasonable timeframe). Treatment would also restore HP but I'd like some kind of lasting effects too so that you need to let the body heal to move between damage categories (treatment may stop a wound bleeding and get it stitched up but it'll be a day or two before the leg can be used easily).

This "bleed" damage would also carry over if it reduced a bodypart to black. So that a serious arm wound could eventually cost somebody their life (through first reducing the arm to black and then sapping torso hp).

As for criticals I'm thinking that they'd have a chance for a location-based effect (unconsciousness for the head, dropping whatever is carried for an arm, maybe knockdown for the torso or legs). A fortitude roll seems the best bet to resist this with the DC being some combination of the damage and crit multiplier (extra critical damage likely having been done away with).


***

So, the point of this ramble. Has anybody had any experience with improving the injury system of the d20 system with particular regard to firearms? Or if not, any thoughts on either of my two ideas to improve it?

[Linklegacy77]

Personally, I like wounds and vitality points just fine. In all honesty, I think the hp system needs to be abstract otherwise the game gets slowed even more as you spend more time calculating. Even worse, you unbalance the game even further in favor of characters with higher hit points, as it takes far less damage to a character with lower hit points to deal enough to give him a penalty than it does for a character with higher hit points. Also, I particularly was glad that they got rid of called shots, no need to bring back into the game targeting different body parts.

[LeadPal]

I'm very much favour of messing with criticals, but not hp in general. It just seems like too much upkeep and isn't automatically realistic either; I'd rather let serious wounds be rare and significant, and not always be a bother.

[nightinverse]

To be perfectly honest, I gave up on realistic combat and injuries in roleplaying games a long time ago, and while it always bears consideration, it is unlikely that there will ever be a simple method of conveying the complex world of human injuries and pain.

The first option is interesting, but I wouldn't use it because then it puts more to rest on the probability of rolling a twenty and over the years I have become less than fond of leaving death and mutilation in the hands of simplified chance. You might apply percentile dice to the issue for more depth, but even then there will be a limited number of results for something which has a limitless amount of permutations as defined by individual variables.

I personally favour your second proposal - I enjoy a similar system in Mechwarrior/Battletech. It is simply to track for a few subjects, but as I'm sure you know, unwieldy for large numbers of participants. However, given what I have observed of your games, you should be able to implement and manage it. Thus, I would advise you to play with that idea, and allow additional time for dealing with it.

[Doomsmile]

In one of my IRL games, the DM started off using Torn Assunder. While it would, on rare occasion, provide a rather spectacular effect, we ended up abandoning it after five weeks or so. It was a little too detailed, so ended up slowing the game down.

Now, critical effects are something that I have tinkered with myself. For instance, in Walk Jockeys (a D20 modern suplement sorta' like a near-future version of Mechwarrior) I implemented a still somewhat abstract Critical Hits Table, which I adapted from the starship rules of D20 future. Some classes and effects allow you to modify your roll on the table to represent having aimed for a specific location in the first place, or what have you.

Still, this did end up using the standard Hit Point system of D20. I'm engaged in an on-and-off joint venture in creating a new RPG system back at College with one of my room-mates (it's based on D12s, since we feel so sorry for them). One thing that ended up causing quite a stirr between us, though, was injury rules. The system we came up with is pretty interesting, though has several kinks to work out. It goes as such:

Each character has a vitality score (and a like number of vitality points), determined by her abilities. When a character gets hit by a damaging attack, she rolls a d12 and adds her vitality points. If it is less than the damage value of the attack, she loses a number of vitality points equal to the attacks's damage value and is knocked unconcious. If the roll equaled or exceeded the attack's damage value, she looses a number of vitality points equal to the weapon's partial damage value, and can keep on acting. If you are ever reduced to 0 vitality points, you die.
What allowed this system to win over is that it's up to the player to describe (within reason) the character's enduring of an attack, possibly ranging from "Ha-HA! I have cleaverly blocked your attack with my chest!" to "That bullet grazed my Armani suit! I've lost my will to live..."
The two of us are still working on several bugs (such as how much to have weapons deal, bleeding out, what penalties- if any- should apply for being at low vitality levels, etc.), but it seems like an interesting alternative to some other systems.

[BigRedRod]

[I've just noticed that hp should go down to -10 not zero, it'd just require another category adding so that between 0 and -10 we have "useless" and then at -10 and below we have "destroyed"]

I think the hp system needs to be abstract otherwise the game gets slowed even more as you spend more time calculating
Luckily I'm adding extra levels of complexity which wouldn't be noticed by anybody in a PBP and that is where I'm intending on using this system. Keeping track of six pools would indeed be very messy in F2F though, but given that it just adds a bit of extra bookkeeping for the DM it really isn't an issue in PBP.

Even worse, you unbalance the game even further in favour of characters with higher hit points,
This was a point I'd not thought about. It doesn't do anything useful if the players can just gain a few levels and start taking rifle shots to the head. Hmmmm, I'm going to have to stop here and try to think of a way of resolving this.

[nightinverse]

You might simply cap the amount of hit points which could be alloted to certain sections of the body, much like the upper limit on Armour Points apparent in Battletech for the Head section. However, that isn't the most logical solution... and it spoils the proportional division of hit points which would be the easiest to implement for locational damage.

How about special location-based massive damage rules? I use the Massive Damage variant in Modern d20 myself - but this would be a slight jump in complexity. Make the location-based massive damage based on some arbitrary save DC and... say, constitution. Or, for the head, you can have that save and a Will check, the latter to remain active.

[LynMars]

The old Warhammer RP had some kind of Body location HP system, but it's been so long since I've played, and I haven't looked at the new system, I couldn't give a definitive idea for adapting it to fit d20 (Since, hey everything can be adapted into d20, right?!).

My attempts at silly sarcasm aside, my F2F GMs have always taken the abstract HP/Wounds systems found in many games and just told players where and how they were hit and let them RP it accordingly. A shot to the leg can kill a person, after all, if it strikes the artery and they bleed out.

Few games (actually, none I've played) get into the idea of blood loss and infection chances, too, when it comes to injuries gained during combat. Not everyone just automatically regains HP (gets better) over the days following a conflict. Especially in non-Modern settings. However, once again, this is a sacrifice of reality in favor of expediency and fantasy .

[Takkaryx]

In Traveller D20, you have Lifeblood, and Stamina. Your stamina is based off of rolling dice, and adding your Con modifier, a system we're all used to. Your lifeblood is your Con stat, period. If you get punched, or exaust yourself, you take stamina damage. It's kind of like subdual, but not quite. In T20, bullets hurt. Alot. When you get hit with a bullet, or something equally traumatic, you take it to lifeblood and stamina. In this case, it's really easy to die from a single bullet. My character has an 18 Con in a IRL game, and he can take 1 shot and be fine, possibly 2, but not 3. This is where armor comes in. Armor adds to your AC, and an equivilant armor rating, ranging from 1 (Really light flack vest) to 8 or so (High tech equivilant to SWAT Entery Gear.) What the AR does, is it takes away the highest rolled dice from the attack, down to at minimum, one die. If there is any left over, you start taking away from that die. This total is taken away from lifeblood, but the whole amount is put into stamina.

For example:
1. You get shot with a Gauss Rifle for 2d12 points of damage. You're wearing an armor with AR 2. The guy rolls his damage, and rolls a 5 and a 7. The AR takes away the highest die, the 7, leaving only one die, a 5. Since you can't get any lower than 1 die, and you still have 1 point of AR left, you subtract 1 point of damge. So the character takes 4 points of lifeblood, and 12 points of stamina.

2. You get shot with a Gauss rifle that's bursting, essentially adding 2 more dice to the damage, for 4d12. Again, you're wearing a AR 2 vest (Unlucky you.) The attacker rolls a 5, 6, 8, 9 (Really unlucky you.) The AR takes away the 2 highest dice, the 8 and the 9, leaving you to take 11 points of lifeblood, and 28 points of stamina. Ouch.

3. Now, you're expecting combat here. You go in with AR 8 armor. You get hit with a gauss rifle, 2d12 points. The attacker rolls a 5 and a 6. The AR takes away the 6, and becasue the remaining AR is more than the last die, the character takes no lifeblood, but 11 stamina.

Criticals work in that they ingnore the AR (Ow.), and Armor Piercing ammo ignores AR up to the AP value of the round. Weapons can burst fire, usually somewhere like 2, 3, 4, or 10. What this does is you can add +1, +2, +3 or +4 to hit or dice of damage. Whats really ugly is when a character like mine is bursting 10 shots for 6d12 points of damage with AP 5 rounds. Made my GM's head hurt for a while.

[BigRedRod]

I've just noticed that d20 modern already goes a small way to attempt to reduce the problems associated with the hp system. Rather than the massive damage threshold being a flat 50, it is now equal to the constitution score of the target. This makes things rather more lethal.

All that needs to be done from here is making the DC scale rather than just being a flat fifteen(which is easily beaten at upper levels).

Saying this though, I'm still tempted to use some kind of injury system (although obviously a much more abstracted one than I was initially proposing). Most likely just having them associated with hits which break the massive damage threshold.

[LeadPal]

Do note that although the Massive Damage DC is easily beaten at higher levels, the low threshold means that eventually every single attack will demand a save. Thus should it be easy to pass.

What if you keep the massive damage threshold fairly low, and then force a scaling fortitude save to avoid ability damage? A save failed by 5 or more could deal ability drain instead, which is permanent. Then you could leave the specifics to roleplay.

[Doomsmile]

Well, with the number of attacks people come under, even a high-level character fails the save 5% of the time. Also, smart- and charasmatic-types tend to have far lower fortitude saves. Just thought I'd throw that out there.

[elmer_jok]

I just read over the UA part of the SRD found here (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/injury.htm). I like the Injury system they describe there with the levels of damage and saving throws. Throw the damn hp's out the window completely!

[Mercutio]

You should consider the damage system from Mutants and Masterminds, which is a lot like the one in UA. Doesn't Shadowrun have a system that's kind of like that too?

[Doomsmile]

Shadowrun has injury boxes, kinda' like White Wolf, except some characters get more than others. Frankly, I never really cared for damage boxes, but that's just me.

[LonePaladin]

Few games (actually, none I've played) get into the idea of blood loss and infection chances, too, when it comes to injuries gained during combat. Not everyone just automatically regains HP (gets better) over the days following a conflict. Especially in non-Modern settings. However, once again, this is a sacrifice of reality in favor of expediency and fantasy.

I can name one system that has fairly realistic methods for handling injuries, including the idea that recovering from such isn't automatic: Rolemaster.

Basically, its combat system is heavy on the idea of critical hits -- but what you get, and how often they come up, is dependent on what kind of weapon you're using and what sort of armor the victim is wearing. (If you're in plate armor, f'rinstance, you'll get hit a lot, but take critical hits rarely; chainmail is great, unless the attacker's using a piercing weapon.)

Most critical hits impose various penalties, bleeding, and specific injuries (like broken bones). Light bleeding can stop on its own, but the heavier stuff may just go on until death results. And penalties accrued from injuries doesn't immediately go away (short of using healing magic) -- it takes time to recover from them, and there's a chance that the hindrance may be permanent.

It's a bit of bookkeeping to track all that, but it's not excessive. It also means that a group in RM without access to healing spells or rare herbs (and someone skilled enough to use 'em properly) will probably end up in very bad shape before too long.