Talk:Wound Thresholds (3.5e Variant Rule)

Ratings

Ghostwheel dislikes this article and rated it 1 of 4.

The problem with death spirals such as this is that they compound on themselves, causing players who are already losing to be more likely to die (unless this only affects creatures, in which case this rating is entirely invalid). If a player has a bad streak of luck, unless that streak continues, I don't want players to die just from a few bad rolls. But this variant compounds on those, causing them to get worse and worse, and the character to be even less likely to be able to recover. There are some games that model reality where this is good, but I don't think it has a place in a combat fantasy game like D&D. Plus, there's the book-keeping to remember the penalties, but that's minor compared to my larger concerns above.

Death Spiral

This variant creates a death spiral. With how randomness works against PCs, this will generally mean that campaigns are more deadly and will see a higher turnover of PCs, which may interfere with the plot. --Ghostwheel (talk) 12:06, 19 November 2018 (MST)

Leziad and Eiji mentioned the Spiral of Death as well; With the way it works currently, until level 5, the penalty for being Bloodied is nothing, the penalty for being Injured is -1 until level 6, and the penalty for being Mortally Wounded is only -2 until level 6, because of the way the rounding down and minimum penalties work. I will shortly add a table to show how the penalties progress, to clarify. That's why the penalties scale - So that it remains noticable at higher levels, but doesn't doom everyone at low levels.

-2 is a harsh penalty at level 1, don't get me wrong, but not any worse than things like Doom. Plus, if you heal back up, it removes the penalty, and healing generally isn't a problem that I've noticed. Lez had originally mentioned making it only take effect at the end of the encounter, which made 0 sense for monsters because you want those to be dead at the end of the encounter, and this is specifically to help HP-damagers in combat.

In order to combat the Death Spiral without causing it to lose its purpose like Lez's suggestion, I added the changes to Endurance and Diehard, allowing you to reduce the effective severity of your wounds by one step.

Lastly, I intend to add some spells for Cleric and Paladin to ease wounds temporarily. Treating them as one category less for 2 rounds + 1 round per CL will work for a cantrip, treating them as two categories less for a minute plus 1 round per Cl will work for a level 2 spell, and ignoring all wounds completely for 1 minute per CL will work for a 4th-level spell.

Do you have any suggestions beyond those that might help? Having Fort saves to push through the pain of the wound and ignore its penalties for 1d4 rounds before needing to make another save? I'm all ears. --Zhenra-Khal (talk) 14:14, 19 November 2018 (MST)

Returning to this after your rating; Pathfinder's version is just a flat -1/-2/-3 to attack rolls, saving throws, skill checks, ability checks, AC and caster level, rather than scaling penalties; This is more severe at level 1 and negligible at high levels, which I find... Disappointing. There is a variant of the variant that doubles the penalties, but -2/-4/-6 at first level is frightening when a single blow could known you down into the -6 range.

Combined with Taking Stock and Healing Surges, I think this variant actually works out quite well. It has a gritty realism to it; In real combat, getting injured slows you down and makes you an easier target if it doesn't kill you outright. Perhaps this isn't great in a fantasy game, but neither is the whole game being ruled by wizards, so. It's up to the DM whether or not they want gritty combat like this. --Zhenra-Khal (talk) 07:51, 25 July 2019 (MDT)

Oops

I didn't realize until a couple days ago that Pathfinder actually has a variant rule by the same name that does something similar. Well... Oops. --Zhenra-Khal (talk) 01:13, 25 July 2019 (MDT)