Thursday, February 20, 2014

Sword and Sorcery notes Part Three

So in going over stuff, I noticed some other directions I went. So, in lieu of designing a new game to fit the genre I was working The Game to make it more match what I liked.

To wit, I borrowed a wound point system from somewhere but kept HP. Hit points were considered temporary damage and a character would progress in the same manner with HP as before. Wounds were real damage and could be lethal and debilitating.

Wound points were derived from the Con score. Con equaled initial wound points. Wound point progression was slow and small. A fighter got 1 every level while an M-U gained 1 every 4 levels.

First to HP. When a character was struck, they got a saving throw. If successful, they fended off the attack and took Hit Point damage. If they failed, the damage would become a wound and come off their wound points. After reaching 0 hp, all damage reverted to wounds. Upon reaching 0 wounds, a character was dead.

This is where my notes got sorta screwy. 1-3 wounds from a blow was a cut or bruise but nothing debilitating. 4-6 damage was a bleeding wound or damaging bruise resulting in the loss of one hp a round and -1 on all checks, combat rolls, saving throws what have you. 7-9 damage was a staggering cut or deep wide bruise resulting in the loss of 2 hp a round and -2 to everything again. 10-12 damage added up to the debilitation of a limb whether through cut or broken bone (I know I also used various critical hit charts to see what type and the nature of the wound) with 4hp loss a round and -4 to everything. 13-16 beggared the imagination with doom despair and agony on the character with potential for limb loss, 8hp and -8.

Fighting large creatures was dangerous.

You can see the core of that HP/Wound as con has been done an upteem billion times in home games and later pubications. In almost all cases, that basic system greatly increased lethality.

My heal side of the issue ran like this; hit point damage could be healed at 1 hp per round of complete rest and food and water, or some such, up to 60%/50/40/30 of total (depending on your wound point advancement. Then at 1 point per hour per level of rest.  

Wounds took that number of weeks to heal as the damage. So a two point wound takes 2 weeks to completely heal. A 12 point wound took 12 weeks to heal.

Anyway, retrofitting and designing a new game were my directions.

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