BLOODIED - An additional step to death for VDS Hack

#1

As I work on this VDS hack of mine, which includes the already-presented Grimoires, I’m also considering how to make the ‘feeling’ of coming death meaningful to the game and to the players beyond just “my armor is disappearing”.

This led to me adding a halfway step between “Alive” and “Dead”: “Bloodied”.

Bloodied is the first stop to the death train; first hit taken without armor to protect makes a character BLOODIED. A BLOODIED character ignores their lowest dice on SPEED and GUTS rolls, as their body “feels the hurt” of being with the hand on the doorknob of death’s door. In my hack, though, being BLOODIED is not all downside: it comes with Bloody Talents, abilities that can help turn the tide in their favor and can be used only once (per BLOODIED “drop”). These are being experimented on in playtest right now, so I’ll lay here the 2 that have been activated there already:

  • Blood Magic: Make your character BLOODIED voluntarily to use this Talent. You gain +1D on spell rolls for GUTS turns.

  • Wrathful Blade: If you are BLOODIED, use this talent to make an attack against every enemy within Arm’s Length.

I’ll update with any changes that come up in the playtests and at least a few more Bloody Talents to try and give a broader view on what kinds of effects they’re taking. I’d appreciate replies and suggestions on Talents!

VDS "Fantasy" with Hacker's Core
#2

At my table playing ICRPG, I use the rule hack “bloodied” (i.e., reduced to half of total hit points or below, a condition ported from 4e D&D) as a mechanical trigger for certain abilities, behaviors, and monster AI branches that I have homebrewed.

#3

That’s the inspiration here, though with VDS not having HP it becomes much more… dramatic. I haven’t gotten to making the adversaries for my hack yet, but I think bigger threats will have something of the kind as well!

#4

Just my personal take, but I would have Bloodied characters ignore the highest die, and then one of the Types has their special skill be that they ignore the lowest die instead

#5

Ignoring the highest die is EXTREMELY powerful. It may not seem so, but in playtests we saw how devastating it would be to drop high on this. It just creates a surefire deathsink.

My players have pitches something like you describe - ignoring the dice effect on BLOODIED as a Bloody Talent - so it might be picked up in that way.

#6

Alright. That makes sense. Just pitching stuff