The Gaming Den

If PC action points are a tool of Big Damn Heroics right? Using it reverse gives the cinematic image of Big Damn Injury and "Oh Shit!"


So instead of an injury being "-X to doing Y" it's a token for the DM to use against the player, an action point to oppose him at a crucial moment.
So that broken rib isn't something that the PC knows exactly how it'll hinder him, instead it'd be like "You flinch at the pain of your broken rib, the goblin takes advantage and presses forward with a flurry of stabs". Game mechanically, the goblin gets to use an action point against the PC (just one per injury suffered).

Or once per encounter, the DM calls for a relevant saving throw pertaining to the injury. If it's the leg, then at some point when he makes a move action the DM can call for a check to see if he stumbles. If it's on his sword arm, then a check to see if the attack fails, that kind of thing.

The PC is now in a state of tension, he knows he's injured, but he doesn't know exactly how the enemy will exploit it.

Just once an encounter so it's not much book keeping or a constant modifier but up to DM discretion means that injury can show at the worst times, keeping PC's more cautious. If the hero fails he can go "damn, if it wasn't for my leg...", but if he succeeds he knows he triumphed over the odds. Either result is cinematic.

Sounds a bit like wound aspects in Fate. I am all for cannibalizing Fate for everything except the basic stat system.

My only complaint is that the DM gets to pick how the injury fucks over the player, and he makes that decision at the time he applies the penalty. I'd prefer a system where there is a list of possible penalties, and one is picked at the time of the injury. Perhaps the DM keeps it a secret from the player and applies it when appropriate, but the DM doing this on the fly rubs me the wrong way.

Well, if you were to actually cannibalize the wound aspect system of Fate, that could work better.

The way that combat works in Fate is that you have physical, mental and social stress tracks, which are kind of like wound boxes in WoD/AS. When an attack deals stress (ie, damage), you mark off that box, but only that box. So if you take 4 stress, you mark the 4th box, but boxes 1-3 are still unmarked. If you take an amount of damage which would mark off a marked box, then it rolls up to the next number (so you take another 4 and mark off the third). When you have no boxes left to mark off, you're taken out (ie, knocked unconscious, have a mental breakdown, socially embarrassed). At any time you can take a Consequence to lessen damage, and a consequence is basically a temporary aspect which can be interacted with like any other aspect. There are four levels of consequence: Mild (-2 dam), Moderate (-4 dam), Severe (-6 dam) and Extreme (-8 dam). A mild consequence is a bruise, or loosing your cool. A Moderate is something which will more reasonably impair you, like a first degree burn or belly slash, or being drunk or exhausted. A Severe is, well, severe and will seriously hamper you if it's called up, like a broken limb, trauma-induced phobia or shame to the degree where you just want to cease to exist. An Extreme consequence is a lasting injury or stress like a punctured lung (and I think phobia should really be here, but whatever) and it replaces one of your permanent aspects. The character who takes the consequence gets to define what it is, and invoking it costs a fate point.

So for example, a goblin slashes at you for 6 damage, and you take a moderate consequence to drop it to 2, saying that you got a pretty nasty stomach wound. The next turn the same goblin attacks again for 4, but spends one of it's own fate points to compel your "Nasty stomach wound" consequence to say that you turn to dodge, twist, and tear open your wound, wincing in pain and providing an opening for it's attack.

The Fate SRD talks about it here.

Cool. Thanks!

That sounds like it leads to death-spirals.

Fate points are a pretty limited meta game currency, and I think the GM gets a total amount for the entire game/session for all opposition, though I'm not sure. Ideally, characters have their own points and are getting more when their aspects are compelled by the GM.

RobbyPants wrote:My only complaint is that the DM gets to pick how the injury fucks over the player, and he makes that decision at the time he applies the penalty. I'd prefer a system where there is a list of possible penalties, and one is picked at the time of the injury. Perhaps the DM keeps it a secret from the player and applies it when appropriate, but the DM doing this on the fly rubs me the wrong way.

I hadn't written out a formal list when I wrote this, but yes there would be a specific list.

Glad to see that my idea has already been put into a well regarded game!

Here are the ways I see it being done:
"team monster gets an action point vs the injured character"

"Injured character is forced once per encounter by DM to reroll success, this is decided before dice are rolled."

Or it's broken down into specific injuries doing specific things, but that depends on the games system.

So you can't die from being injured, you just keep incurring more and more anti-action points?

I can see this working relatively well as a mostly informal mechanic in a mostly informal rules lite system.

Trying to envisage it in a formalized mechanic though I hit the following snag.

Asking myself "what is the difference/point to doing this rather than deciding the nature of the injury penalty on applying an injury?"

I got several options.

1) To better screw over the player.
Your dude didn't KNOW he wanted to injure the PCs leg until the PC decided to do a jump maneuver AFTER receiving the injury. This isn't necessarily super bad, but it's sort of unnecessary and players are likely to see it as a bit of a screw you.

2) To reduce complexity/durations
So instead of "You get -5 to jump for 7 Turns starting now you just been injured" its, you just been injured, then 5 turns later the GM says "you got an injury token? Cool, -5 to jump this turn only". This is... only possibly less complex. And it's not entirely why you then don't instead say "starting this turn you have -5 on your next jump action". Well, other than possibly to prevent unnecessary jump actions used to burn off injury penalties... but then what about the generic "unknown" injury penalty causing all sorts of extra stunts to try and burn those off before real actions anyway?

3) The GM might not get around to spending them all
Probably the most clear difference... The GM might not get around to actually applying a penalty with a floating undefined "Injury Point" before the end of it's potential duration. A flat -5 to jump for X turns or Rest of Combat or Next Jump Action In Combat or whatever also might never apply in combat, but it's going to have a clearer influence on player actions. A floating "maybe a penalty to almost anything you do" isn't gonna stop anyone doing anything in particular, all the more so if you hit the end of combat and the GM hadn't got around to spending it. This seems like largely a bad thing.

So I'm really not clear on why you would do this in a formal system over deciding injury penalties on hit. Most everything I see that is different seems like a questionable negative. With the edge case of it being better to prevent circumvention of "-X to next Y Type Action" by performing an additional less important Y type action.

It's really just a bit of a "what is this doing for you again?" thing.

This was originally thought up of in a D&D4e discussion on how injuries can have a mechanical effect on the game.

As that game already has a lot of fiddly modifiers, but also an action point and encounter power system, I thought of injuries as a negative encounter power the DM uses on you.

That however is not precisely what you described.

As an encounter power it's functionally identical to "Minotaur Axe Dude has a 1/encounter ability to cut your arm off when he damages you".

Your initial description of this idea goes very different places to that.

In Cortex+, or at least in Marvel Heroic, it's a little similar to Fate Aspects. You have three damage tracks; physical, emotional, and mental. These start blank but based on the size of die inflicted on you (d4, 6, 8, 10, or 12), you now have that size of die as that type of damage. If you are hit with an effect with a smaller size die than your current damage, your damage is increased just one step. If you are moved beyond d12, you are incapacitated and cannot act for the remainder of the scene.

This can be used by either the DM or the player; the DM spends an equal or greater die from the Doom Pool (similar to DM Action Points, but they're specific die sizes attached) to include a target's damage in any roll against that character, or the player can choose to use it in their roll against any target, but they have to "step it up" afterwards.

For example, an Orc attacks you and deals d8 damage, so your physical damage is now at d8. You decide to include the d8 in your attack on your turn (enraged at the Orc's lucky shot, or something), and afterwards you would step it up to d10. Now the DM can burn a d10 or greater from the Doom Pool to use that d10 against you (the Orc attacks you on the side of your injured arm).

Interestingly, there is a parallel system of Complications which works exactly the same, they're just more specific than general damage and interact with defenses differently. Also, these can be reduced by player actions in the scene, while damage usually has to wait until later to be healed.