Hamakto wrote:Death has to be part of the experience in DCC RPG. I agree with that. This solution is more workable than the wounds solution above. While the wounds system is nice, it is rough on an adventuring party when one player is removed from action for the adventure. Especially for those groups that do not play every week. Yes he lived, but now the entire group has to leave to rest/heal for a period of time or the player does nothing for the session.
It is almost more merciful to kill them and have them roll up a new character to be 'rescued' from the dungeon or wherever the adventure takes place.
I am not picking on anyones ideas, but just putting some thoughts out there on what has been discussed.
It's a fair enough criticism. But I'd put it on the "feature not bug" list. The easiest way to mitigate that is by reducing the penalties for the wounds to (-1, -1, -2, -4). Which makes it more pulpy, less final. Or (-1, -1, -2, One die lower) if we're going for a more DCC approach.
The idea of Wounds isn't to make things easy on the adventuring party. The idea is to make it a hard choice. If a character has 12 hit points gets hit for 25 points of damage, I think death should be on the table. I think making the penalties too light would make the Wounds into "gimmes" where death was never a viable choice. Then again, making the Wound penalties lighter give a similar approach to having an "extra life" in a video game and would make "Skillburn" more common.
I'll have to think about that.
Another option, sort of a middle ground, is to have the Wound penalties shift die types... (-1, -2, one die type lower, two die types lower). But not having those negatives or die shifts be cumulative. So the worst anyone could ever have is -2 and two die shifts lower. That's a little complicated, IMO. And it might be best to stick with the pulpy values with the die shift above.
Or scrap a good chunk of it and just give three Wound "boxes". Checking off a box can soak 5 points of damage or give a +2 to any roll -- except for Hit Dice, of course. Multiple boxes could be checked off at once and are recovered naturally at a rate of one per week. Magical Healing can remove the penalty associated with a box but it remains checked off and can't be "reused" until it clears out after a week. Magical healing can "heal" a box in this way at a cost of 5 hp per box.
Penalties depend on how many boxes are checked off (-1, -2, one die type lower) but the penalties are not cumulative.
So, I could get a +6 to a save or a skill check by ticking off all three boxes. But then I make all my d20 rolls (non-damage rolls) at one die type lower. Usually a d16.
Or I could avoid being dropped to zero hit points by a 4 points of damage attack by ticking off one box. And then I have a -1 to all d20 rolls.
Thanks for the criticism. Keep them coming. It gives me more to try out and challenges me to improve on the idea. I appreciate it.
I'd also like to point out that I see this as mostly unrelated to the "Second Save" situation. Both could co-exist with no real overlap, IMO. The Wounds thing's point is to (A) give a means to achieve a Pyrrhic Victory and (B) to make characters a little hardier so death is less common -- especially at lower levels. Higher level characters would likely not need Wounds and would more likely use them for "Skillburn" than anything else.
No version of D&D has ever embraced the concept of a Pyrrhic Victory. In fact, the only rpgs I know of that have a suitable system for them are HeroQuest and Mountain Witch.
Having a "Death Save" sort of mechanic would just give a player another option. Do they burn two boxes (or take a Minor Wound) to make their save versus death? Or do they trust that their luck will win out in the "death save" -- understanding that they may, in fact, wind up Unconscious and still needing to burn up those Wound boxes (or letting the character go)?
Player choice. Can't go wrong there...