Hail, Adventurers!
In the Recovery section of CORE, it mentioned injuries. I’m working on some injury rules, tables, etc. for an upcoming dark fantasy game, and wanted to pose the question to you all:
How would you guys handle injuries in your games? When would you impose them? Would you tier them in severity? What effects would they have? How does magical healing work for them?
One way I’ve thought about but haven’t put into practice yet is if the player is hit with at least “x” amount of damage in a single hit, you roll to see which body part is injured and each has different effects such as using weapons with that arm is always HARD or casting spells is HARD if the head is injured, or movement is halved if leg is hurt, etc. And then to heal that injury with magic, the effort roll must heal at least “x” hp in single roll, otherwise the player heals but the injury effect remains.
I’ve toyed with the idea before, but a mechanical system of injury will slow down the game. I would make an Injury into a description tag for the character. That, or treat an injury like a piece of CURSED Loot that just makes actions HARD until removed. Serious injury(s)? More loot chunks. Takes longer to remove and lowers Gear capacity until fixed. Remove by treating each injury as a 1 Heart WIS or CON challenge. Don’t overthink it, this could be applied on the fly. No table needed 
That’s a super fun idea. Considering the much less balance obsessed, much more dangerous, high pressure nature of ICRPG it seems like a great venue to bring out something like this.
Were I to run it, it’d make heft use of tags–not much in terms of hard mechanics, just a key word associated with the kind of damage different enemies deal. So a fire elemental might leave you with Burns. A creature with a club might leave characters Bruised or Concussed. Slicing damage could cause Bleeding. Whenever a monster hits for big damage (whatever on the fly I consider that to be) I would have the player roll a Con save. If they lose I would inflict this status on them. Whenever they came into contact with a situation where the injuries they have would come into play (Bleeding when badguys are tracking them–or in water with sharks, Concussed when trying to read the clues to a trap as the room is filling with sand, Sprains when trying to make athletics checks to perform extreme feats). I don’t know that I would want people to have a lot of mechanics to keep track of, but I like the idea that battles leave lasting injuries that players have to take into account. If I were to have one I would probably crib the mechanics of Spell Burn, except have it be 1d4 rounds overwhelmed by your injury and unable to contribute meaningfully until you take a breather.
Honestly as far as when injuries went away, I’d argue extended rest–more than a couple of regular daily rests depending on the injury maybe many more–at which point it would turn into a wicked cool scar, or with magical or technological healing. But I’m a meanie–and also like I said I wouldn’t use them as a mechanical penalty all the time, just circumstantially.
I do like the idea though of giving injuries out as a kind of cursed loot–that’s fun too. They lock up loot slots and inflict a penalty equivalent to the bonus a regular item grants. That seems like a neat mechanic. I might try that out too.
Another idea for dealing with Injuries could be to make it a choice of the player.
The PC gets slashed by his cruel nemesis, taking out his last heart point, but instead of falling to defeat there the DM offers the player a choice. He can survive the blow with 1HP left and perhaps survive this struggle yet, but only if he then loses an eye instead (making all sight checks HARD from now on).
I feel most players would take this choice and it wouldn’t feel as thrust upon them since they chose it themselves. A grim choice of survival. As well, it gives the DM some extra wiggle room in how things play out and another tool to add some drama and that sweet taste of near-defeat to the game.
If you roll privately (behind a screen for example) it’s much easier to impose this kind of thing. Let’s say you roll to hit them, success… and the damage is high… near to maximum or maximum… then you can say in your description after the roll… “The orc rages and with a mighty swing of it’s war club connects as you are just too slow getting out of range of it’s long reach. It bashes up against your shield as you raise it instinctually to protect yourself. The power behind the blow staggers you backwards a step or two. You hear a loud “Crack” at the moment of impact and just thought it was the wood of the shield breaking as you did see pieces of it flying about but it’s not until you regain your footing that you realize it was your arm that broke as well. You roll with a -1 disadvantage for your next turn due to the agony of the blow. Luckily it was only your shield arm and not your weapon arm.” I find if you roll publicly and do something like this… every time you roll a number the same… the players will expect the same kind of thing over and over when really… this might have been because of the Orc, the weapon, the moment, in order to further the story, etc so really the roll wasn’t the actual reason you imposed an injury at all. By keeping it private they tend to think there must be a certain number you rolled that made this happen, not just the GM being a jerk. lol
It obviously varies based on GM and group, but I haven’t ever and don’t think I would ever deploy a mechanic like injuries. Damage from foes/obstacles is injurious and worrisome enough for my players without making the damage of a permanent/semi-permanent nature.
Battle scars and other such reminders of nasty conflicts and close calls with death are great, but for my taste permanent/semi-permanent injuries to characters is a layer of complexity I’d much rather avoid.
With ICRPG you can always employ “lost” or “damaged” player loot in place of injuries. By doing so, you don’t need to introduce any new mechanics/rules. You can simply have a piece of equipment be damaged/destroyed in an attack thus causing the player to lose its bonuses/effects.
We haven’t yet had the loss or damage of any major loot items in our campaign, but, being as averse to added complexity as I am, that’s the route I would take to simulate the effects of an injury.
Thanks for all the feedback guys! This is for a pretty gritty, dark fantasy game, and the players have opted-in for using injuries, stress/sanity, item durability, resource tracking, etc. So, I’ve got the green light to brutalize them a bit – those are the stories they want to tell for a while.
Kindred, your x-amount is very similar to old school system shock type rolls, I like it!
Grizzly, making injuries into tags is an awesome idea. Even COOLER if perhaps these tags take up inventory slots (can’t carry as much loot with a broken leg).
Grim, as above, loving the tag idea. Using the Spell Burn base is interesting as well, I’ll try that for some injuries if they come up! Thanks for the lengthy post, lots of good bits!
Antrhueser, that’s very cool! I like giving players the opportunity to take control of their fate, even the horrible parts. I think I’ll sometimes offer a choice between taking crit damage or an appropriate injury.
Scotty, good point about players believing there is a reason they’re getting an injury other than DM-fiat. I’ll likely introduce this (or, actually make an injury table per damage type perhaps, with enough lee-way to improvise and narrate).
OldSchoolGM, thanks for the feedback! I think we’re going to use injuries in this game, as the players seem into it, but I do generally agree that Injuries as long-term debilities aren’t always the best. Especially since most RPGs are about character progression, not regression, mechanically. I’ll keep this stuff in mind for the sake of fun and speed.
You guys are awesome, thanks a bunch! Game on!
I’ve been toying with an injuries and setback table inspired heavily by the Midlands low fantasy books where some enemies who roll a nat 19+ hit cause the targeted player to roll on the table.
Table of 20 outcomes with the lower numbers being damage to Eyes, Arms, and Legs.
Example: Eye damage - All vision based rolls are HARD until the eye is treated professionally. Make a CON roll against the room target on failure instead lose an eye.
Its not for all tables, but for a grimdark like setting it seems fitting
The Body as (Literal) Chunks
You could represent parts of the body as Chunks (Torso, Head, Arms (or L/R arm), Legs (L/R leg). Each Chunk would have its own Heart of health and harm tags, and a “trauma(?)” heart track indicating their body’s current capacity to endure more acute injury.
Descriptive Injuries
Injuries could be represented by tags (inspired by Blades in the Dark), could be one of three tiers (as fictionally appropriate), with increasing disadvantages per tier
T1 (detrimental) = HARD related roll OR reduced Effort will escalate to T2 in d4 days [laceration]
T2 (debilitating) = HARD roll AND reduced Effort, will escalate to T3 injury in d8 hours [gangrene]
T3 (deadly) = Above penalties AND d6 turns until 0 HP (then another d6 until death) [systemic sepsis]
In Action
Ulrich’s right arm was swiped by a bear for 5 damage; both “arm” and “trauma” would suffer 5 damage, and arm would additionally get a T2 injury “deep claw gashes”. Arm can be healed by correct medical attention, Trauma track goes up 1HP each Round up to max.
Goals with this are to represent the body’s systemic capacity to endure injury as separate from local injury, give mechanical and narrative impact to injuries, and provide a symptom escalation process with as little mental friction as possible.
What this doesn’t represent is any kind of mental or psyche trauma. Might be able to do something similar (again, Blades does this well).