Wound Level Mechanics For d20 Games (And Maybe Dungeons & Delvers)

While writing about hit points and how based on Dungeons & Dragons mechanics they must all be meat points (albeit influenced by combat skill and toughness), as well as issues with healing magic, I ended up devising the skeleton of a sort of Wound Level mechanic.

I don't know if we'll actually use this. The more I work on it the more I like it, but it seems like a huge amount of work when all I really wanted to do for Dungeons & Delvers 2nd Edition is go all in on armor as DR, tweak a few mechanics, and completely overhaul all of the spells.

But maybe people will like this, and maybe it'll work out way better in the end, so here's what I've come up with (as I wrote this out I sometimes went back and forth on certain mechanics and concepts, so I might have repeated or even contradicted myself):

Everyone has one or more Wound Levels. I'm thinking that for the average person you'd have:

• Slightly Injured (-1)
• Moderately Injured (-2)
• Severely Injured (-3)
• Critically Injured (-4 or -5, have to save each turn to avoid progressing to Dying)
• Dying (unconscious)
• Dead (dead)

These levels are not meant to indicate individual injuries but your overall state. If you get stabbed and suffer 1 Wound, you are Slightly Injured. If you get stabbed again and suffer 1 Wound, you are now Moderately Injured.

These penalties are not cumulative. If you are Moderately Injured, you are just -2 to everything, not -3 because, again, this isn't meant to represent individual injuries and their severity, but your overall state. 

These penalties are imposed on all your d20 rolls (attack rolls, ability checks, skill checks, and saves), as well as saving throw DCs for your own effects (so a wizard's spells become easier to resist the more injured he becomes, due to issues concentrating and such).

At Critically Injured, you are dying but still conscious enough to act. This would build on our Dead Man Walking rule, where you attempt a CON save each round to avoid passing out and moving to Dying. At Dying you're unconscious and have a random amount of time before you are dead.

(The reason for the CON save is so that it is a way still relevant to character health. Which sounds better than having it modify your total Wound Levels, though I suppose this would also be possible.)

Classes and size could affect Wound Levels. So a fighter might have two Slightly Injured levels (and so could suffer seven Wounds before dying), and a barbarian could have two Slightly Injured and Moderately Injured levels (able to suffer eight Wounds before dying).

A goblin on the other hand would either lose out on one of its Wound Levels, or suffer a size-based penalty to the save (this avoids something like a cat having six Wounds and being stupidly tough to kill). Or it loses one or more Wound Levels and the penalty increases across the board.

At higher levels classes could also gain a kind of "free" Wound level that imposes no penalties at all, a bonus to saves made specifically to resist Wounds, and more Wound Levels in general. I'm not sure if I want to do this, however, as it could get crazy and make characters exceedingly hard to kill.

When you are hit:

• The attacker rolls damage as normal (ie, 1d4, 1d6-1, 1d8+1, 2d6+3, etc)
• For every 5 points the Attack Roll exceeds the target’s Defense (not Armor Class, but Defense), it deals +1 damage.
• Subtract the armor's Damage Reduction from this total. For perspective, a gambeson is DR 3. So is mail, but you can stack both for a total DR of 6. Plate armor is the best and grants DR 10. Expect most characters to have DR 3-6 though.
• Some weapons have Armor Penetration, which lets them ignore one or more points of an armor's DR. Many weapons have AP 1, though it’s pretty easy to add AP 1 or 2 to many attacks. 
• All armor has an Armor Class value, which is added to a character's Defense. If an attack roll meets-or-beats this value, then the attack completely ignores the armor’s DR. For perspective, most warrior classes have a base Defense of 12, meaning that if they are wearing armor with an AC of +5, then their AC will be 17. An attack roll of 12-16 will hit but the armor absorbs some of the damage. If a 17+ is rolled, then either the attack hit a weak point or some place the armor wasn't protecting, and so the defender takes full damage.
• If struck, the defender has to make a CON save, DC 10 + whatever damage went through.
• Failing the save is 1 Wound, +1 Wound for every 5 points you fail the DC by.
• A natural 1 means you take +1 Wound on top of everything else.
• A natural 20 doesn’t negate ALL damage, but reduces the Wounds suffered by another point on top of whatever it would normally do. This can reduce it to 0.
• Dungeons & Delvers uses a Gang Up mechanic, so subsequent attacks made during the same round against the same target get a cumulative +1 to hit, so it makes it more and more likely that attacks will bypass DR completely, as well as inflict bonus damage.
• There are many conditions that allow you to inflict bonus damage and/or reduce a target’s Defense.

This works for all forms of damage. For spells and other save-for-half things, you make the save as normal, and then make a CON save based on whatever damage is left over.

Some math:

1st-level fighter with a Constitution score of +1. He gets another +1 to CON saves from class, so he has a total modifier of +2.

He is wearing a DR 3 gambeson with an AC of 17 (ie, if an attack roll is 17+ it strikes a vulnerable spot in his armor and completely ignores its DR).

He is struck by a goblin with a spear (1d6 damage, AP 1). The goblin's average attack roll would be something like 12 or 13, which is enough to hit but not high enough to avoid the armor. Average damage would be 3.5. With an AP of 1, it means the armor only soaks 2 points. That means only 1 damage goes through, so the fighter has to make a DC 11 Constitution save (which gives him a 55% chance of success).

If the attack overcame the fighter's armor, it would have been a DC 13 save, which he only has a 45% chance of succeeding against.

So in most cases the fighter will end up suffering an Injury after 2-3 attacks, which will then make it harder for him to resist the next set of attacks. So maybe another 1-2 attacks and he'll get Injured again, then another attack or two to be Injured a third time, and at that point any attack that inflicts 1 point of damage is more than likely going to knock him into a Critically Injured state.

So we're looking at, what, seven or so attacks? Compare to an 11 hit point fighter, the goblin could be expected to inflict 1.5 damage per round, which would mean he would need seven attacks to get the fighter into Dead Man Walking, and it would take several more attacks to actually kill the fighter (though it would be easier at this point due to the DMW penalty).

Now if we give the fighter another Slightly Injured level, he could probably hold out for another 2-3 attacks. Still not as durable as the hit point fighter, but better.

But what if the goblin rolled max damage? The hit point fighter would suffer 4, which would be nearly half his hit points. The Wound Level fighter on the other hand just has to succeed on a DC 14 CON save to avoid all harm, which isn't all that hard given his +2 bonus. But even if he fails he's only likely to suffer 1 Wound (out of like 6 or 7 available).

If the goblin roll a 17 and 6 damage? That's over half the hit point fighter's health, while the Wound Level fighter has to succeed on a DC 16 CON save to ignore it all. His odds aren't as good, but on average he'll only fail and suffer 1 Wound so maybe this isn't as cut and dry as it seems.

What if the fighter attacks the goblin? The fighter also probably has a spear: he attacks and probably hits, and deals something like 1d6+3 damage (+2 from Strength and +1 from class), for an average of 6.5. The spear has AP 1, so even if the goblin has a gambeson 4 damage goes through. The goblin has to make a DC 13 CON save, which it probably fails, and there's a decent chance it fails by 5 or more points, so it gets two Wounds.

If we shave off one Wound Level for being Small he's halfway dead. Now goblins in Dungeons & Delvers have a pitiable amount of hit points, such that the fighter could probably kill him in one or two hits, so this seems about on point, but I could also just assign Wound Levels to monsters as it makes sense, making it so that at only three Wounds the goblin is Critically Wounded.

Heck, a monster stat block could even give a monster's Wounds, as well as the Injury modifier for each Wound suffered. That would certainly make it easier to track. Something like:

Wounds 4; -1, -3, -5

At 0 Wounds the monster is effectively dead, just like a GM would assume a monster is dead at 0 hit points instead of individually going through the whole dying countdown.

Wizards in Dungeons & Delvers can wear armor without penalty, so long as they are strong enough to carry it (we use an actual encumbrance system, as opposed to a lame-ass item slot or carry x things gimmick), which unlike Dungeons & Dragons makes actual sense. So a wizard would also be rocking a DR 3 gambeson, though he won't have a bonus to his CON saves and probably not a Constitution bonus.

This means I'd expect him to be at least 10% more likely to suffer injury than the fighter and so unsurprisingly easier to kill, especially if classes get class-based Wound Levels. I think here the wizard still wins out pretty well in terms of comparative durability, as it is unlikely that a couple of dagger stabs are going to take him out.

For higher level monsters:

Ogres inflict something like 2d6+7 damage on a hit, and their weapons have an AP value of at least 1. So, average damage would be 14 (AP 1). Against a level 1 fighter using a hit point mechanic this would immediately knock him to dying right off the bat.

In a Wound Level system, the fighter would on average have to make something like a DC 22 save. He would on average fail it by 10 points, meaning that he would suffer 3 damage. That’s about halfway dead, which still sounds generous.

But what if the hit point fighter is 3rd-level? On average he’d have like 23 hit points (assuming average HD rolls). This means that he can now reliably take two hits, about what you’d expect from the 1st-level fighter on a Wound Level system.

What kind of sucks for the Wound Level fighter is that at level 3, he still has six Wounds. This makes sense: the fighter isn't becoming unnaturally tougher, but I always interpreted hit point progression to largely represent combat experience (though it falls apart when you can take damage from poisons and such). 

The only saving grace is that the Defense bonus increases as he levels up, so he is less likely to get struck by the ogre, and the ogre is less likely to inflict bonus damage. Of course we were going to do this with the hit point fighter as well, who also has Vitality Points that recover several times during the day as well.

So perhaps Wound Levels should improve now and then as you level up. Have to playtest this and see how it works out.

For conditions:

Bleeding, Burning, and Corroding will need to be tweaked. These normally inflict damage every round (so are always an issue for hit point characters), but if they inflict automatic Wounds would make them insanely potent. The immediate workaround is to give each a save DC to avoid suffering an automatic Wound on top of everything else.

So for example Burning (DC 15) would mean you have to succeed on a DC 15 save to avoid suffering a Wound, plus another Wound every five points you fail. The save DC would increase or decrease as normal. For especially powerful effects, you could say that you suffer an automatic Wound (or even more) no matter what.

I guess it depends on how lethal we want the game to be.

For spells:

Spells work the exact same way, with saving throws still applying so you can reduce the damage that way before making the CON save. I'm now thinking psychic attacks might be resisted using Wisdom, though. Maybe some spells or abilities would let you use other stats, too. Like a wizard could enchant himself with something that lets him save using INT for a while.

The damage of some spells might need to be tweaked, and some could inflict automatic Wounds if you enhance them enough. This I think will be tricky, as due to how hit points normally scale you could easily obliterate an orc with a lightning bolt, but in this system might only mostly kill it.

But then I suppose that depends on your lightning bolt damage roll and whether it makes the save. So, maybe not as swingy as I'm thinking.

OTHER CONSIDERATIONS

I think a Wound Level mechanic will make the game deadlier and more difficult, which isn't inherently a bad thing. Even running armor-as-DR with Wound/Vitality Points, for the wife and kids the game is pretty deadly at low levels. I think a greater concern is complexity: rolling damage and making a save might eat up more time, though I don't think so. At least not by much.

Another concern I see is a sort of death spiral. Once the fighter gets slapped with an Injury or two, he'll be performing worse by every metric. Every one gets a scaling Attack Bonus, however, and monster Defense doesn't bizarrely scale by "level", so it's actually useful.

The penalty would matter less at higher levels (and could even be alleviated by Talents and/or Skill Perks), so I'm not sure if a fight against a dragon would become trivial once it has been injured a few times. Heck, some monsters might ignore or even add the Injury penalty in some cases. But at lower level players will need to be more careful, which makes sense.

This system would make healing magic and alchemical potions more useful, as they would restore Wound Levels instead of randomized hit point amounts. It would also make more sense, which was part of the reason I devised this system in the first place. I'm torn between having a Healing Miracle restore one Wound Level at a time, or ALL Wound Levels with the same penalty (so a fighter with two Slightly Injured levels gets them both back with a single use).

I think mending potions will need to be revamped, taking longer to kick in. Maybe each one restores a single Wound Level over the course of 10 minutes or even an hour, so no knocking them back in combat. That'll certainly make Healing Miracles all the more meaningful. Not sure what to do with Vigor potions: maybe reduce Exhaustion penalties? Give you a free Wound level? Ignore an Injury penalty for awhile due to like an adrenaline rush? Yeah, that sounds pretty cool.

For wizards and clerics, the Injury Penalty will affect the save DC of their spells. For wizards it could also add to the Drain cost, not sure about clerics and Favor costs since one Favor is roughly equivalent to 4 Willpower. For Drain dipping into Wound Levels, the wizard would roll Drain, and whatever excess would be treated as damage suffered (automatically ignoring DR from armor, of course).

So if a wizard would normally suffer 8 damage due to Drain, he’d have to make a DC 18 save to avoid harm. This could lead to Talents in which the wizard gets a bonus on saves made to resist damage from Drain.