I am trying to make combat in D&D more intensive. By intensive I mean
A) Takes other factions into account, like bleeding, fatigue, wounds, exhaustion, armor, weapon styles, shields ect
B) Making Combat far more scary, so that casual combat more interesting and everybody has to be careful
C) Greater variety
So just a collection of rules before I move on
1) Hit points still exist, I don’t want to get ride of that. However the way they work I might tinker with
2) Combat challenges from Iron Heroes, Ie additional benefits you can apply to an attack in return for a decrease in your defensive abilities. For example, an attack that will knock a weapon out of their hand, or force them into a certain area are both examples of this style, however in return you take a penalty on defense. The range of the benefits and the penalties depend upon what class you are, martial usually have far better benefits.
3) Stunts are ways of incorporating skill bonuses into combat, normally as a way to make up for being mechanically outmatched. I haven’t figured it out yet, but something like pushing over a barrel in order to jump off of it to make an attack. They add bonuses to your actions depending on you skill points
4) Defense class is how well you can deflect or parry blows, which is determined by your class, your level, your Strength bonus, as well as your weapon and shield. Armor does not give you a defense bonus. If somebody attacks you but you succeed your defense check, then you simply can avoid any damage, but your actions next turn will be limited, depending on the weapon used and what you blocked with. For example, if the fighter armed with a short sword is attacked by an orc great axe, he is able to block the axe, but in the process is knocked backwards and losses his sword. however if he had a shield, he would keep his weapon, stand his ground and take no damage, but he would still have his movement next turn limited. Defense bonus isn’t applied if you are taken by suprise or without your equipment
5) Dodge bonus is a way of avoiding attacks all together, and is depended upon your dexterity. This does not scale with level, with the exception of a few classes, and if you succeed a dodge check, the attack simply doesn’t hit you. However it is very hard for characters get very high dodge bonuses, with the exception of classes like Rogue or Ninja who are hard to hit. You loose this bonus. Again, this is taken away if you are under attack.
6) Wounds- Certain weapons, certain class abilities, or certain attacks that inflict over a certain hit point limit can inflict injuries upon a foe. These are minor negative status effects that linger after combat, much like the injuries in Dragon Age/Dragon Age II. The wound is randomly chosen, so they can vary from midly annoying (a 2 to spell caster for a fighter is worthless), to inconvenient (a -1/4 speed for a caster) to frustrating (a -2 to all attack bonuses for a Ranger). Special healing spells can deal with these after battle. You can get multiple injuries during combat, but rarely on a single attack (unless you are up against a Warrior), and certain martial classes can either increase their chances of scoring the attack, or decrease their chances of being effected by an injury. A dodge is decreased by how heavy your armor is, or if you are using a shield ect.
7) Pain Certain weapons or attacks can inflict pain damage, which is a seperate stat. Each class has a certain “pain tolerance” which is determined by their race, class, constitution, and level. A martial class can choose to reduce the damage of their attack (IE how many hit points are taken away) in return for inflicting more pain. Pain inhibits all physical stats, as well as all stats involving concentration, making casting hard. However pain doesn’t normally get inflicted easily without special class abilities/luck/feats/weapons. If a character suffers too much pain, they can go down fairly easily.
8) Armor class- An attack has to be successful in order to even do damage. Otherwise it bounces off as useless. A shield will also help with this
9) Armor as damage reduction. To make this clear, depending upon the armor, armor can provide Defense class, Armor Class, AND damage reduction. A leather jacked will only provide some basic damage reduction, while a set of full plate will provide not only a high armor class, a moderate defense bonus, and moderate damage reduction, it will also provide resistance to injuries, pain deduction, and might even break the enemies blade. Of course, armor is heavy, provides a penalty to stealth/dexterity, and drains far more fatigue.
10) Armor effects- Certain armors will have special effects (discounting magic obviously), for example, helmets will reduce the chance of a critical hit, while full plate might catch a weapon inside the armor, leaving it stuck.
11) Wound points- Getting wounded fucking hurts, and it often does some really nasty as fuck things to your body. Thus in addition to everything else, characters have what are called “Wound points”. this doesn’t measure weather you are alive or not, but instead how long you can last before your body starts falling apart on you. You have as many wound points as your Consitution x 2 +Level. Every attack that inflicts actual hit point damage will also reduce a single wound point. As long as you have wound points, you are able to keep on fighting without taking any penalties to combat (unless it is a status effect, like bleeding or injuries). After your wounds run out however, you start bleeding and taking a minus on your defense, attack, and dodge bonuses. These penalties keep building until you have your wound points restored, or you can get some healing, or you die.
12) Vigor points- Vigor represents how health you are, and how well you can avoid being effected by various effects. Vigor (normally) is not determined by equipment, but instead by your class, your Constitution, and your level. If you are hit by an effect, you can give up a certain amount of vigor points to negate that effect. For example, you can give up 5 vigor points instead of losing 5 hit points, or you can give up 5 vigor points to avoid an injury, or you can give up a 10 Vigor points to avoid losing a wound point. Certain weapons however rely upon inflicting vigor points in addition to hit points, such as serrated or barbed weapons. vigor also determines how well you heal naturally. Spells can restore vigor points of course
13) Called shots, you can take a penalties to an attack in order to try to inflict an attack on a specific region, which inflicts wounds on a target, these are very specific attacks that undermine your ability to use that particular body part, for example a wound on your arm might make that arm unusable, or extremely weak, or even cut it off
14) After you are reduced to 0 hit points, you are conscious but have to roll a constitution save if you take any physically strenuous action. After that you go into negative hit points, of which you have -10 + constitution (total), + Level. Essentially you are dying. For the first 10 hit points, you get a chance to roll a very difficult Constitution check in order to stabilize, where you simply stop losing hit points. -10, you only have a 1 in 20 chance of stabilizing, and will bleed out until you pass over your negative hit point limit, where you will die. If you are healed from negative to positive hit points, you are considered crippled, until you can get a powerful healing spell, which is a permanent wound randomly decided, (for example a broken arm). all of these wounds will go way over time, or with the right magic. Certain truly vile weapons or attacks can make it so that you gain extra wounds when you go into negatives, others are even rumored to make it so you only get -10 hit points at best.
15) All raise dead spells have been split into many different spells. The weakest spells will restore the body if the person died within the last ten mins, even then he will be at 1 hit point and extremely fatigued. More powerful spells will work within 1 hour, 1 day, 3 days, a week, or a ten day, or a year. All of these spells have sub specifications, like for example weather he will lose a level, weather he will lose Consitution, weather he needs to be healed first, if the bodies needs to be in good condition, or if he will be restored at 1 hit point. The most powerful spells can bring a guy back from life almost right away, while they are in the middle of combat. True Resurrection is the only spell which will restore them to life after any point in time (provided they didn’t die of old age and the soul can be found), with no level loss, at full hit points, without requiring the body and without any chance of a Resurrection failure. A Resurrection failure is chance that the soul has somehow come back wrong. Regardless, all raise dead effects will change the character’s soulname, for better or for worst.
16) A fatigue system, which is drained when you take certain actions, i have no idea how to implement this, except i want the armor you wear to determine how much you lose
17) Save or die spells for the most part are changed into variable effects, depending on the level of the caster, the target and the spell. True save or die effects are extremely risking and high level, and often allow multiple saves.
18) Certain high level spells, instead of costing XP, instead add an XP debt, which is a certain amount of extra Xp the caster must gain to level up.
19) All healing spells are broken up into a wide variety of healing spells, some of which deal with hit points, vigor points, Wound points, Fatigue, injuries, wounds, or served limbs. Only the most powerful heal all of these effects at once. All healing spells also have chances of failing, or only partially healing the target.
20) A crippling wound happens if a single attack is higher than twice a character’s total con score, which normally results in a servered limb, a missing eye, a cut off ear ect.
21) Magical healing will leave scars if the wound isn’t treated within a day, though specific spells can remove these
22) Certain martial classes can inflict aggravated damage, which are wound over time in a very specific manner. However these are high level abilities, and only open to martial classes. Certain healing spells can get ride of these effects (a wounding effect from the magical item is much easier to fix than these effects)
23) Magic items require a mix between a crafter and a spell caster, both of home have to take time and money to make the item.
24) Armor counts as a proficency skill, which means certain characters can put combat points itno armor to increase its benefits, IE a novice wearing full plate might have lower defense than an expert wearing chainmail.
25) Certain weapons have penetration bonuses which allow them to ignore armor/defense/damage reduction effects. these only apply (normally) against certain kinds of armor, for example a mace vs. a breastplate wouldn’t work as well against chainmail.
26) certain masters have what is called a carapace, which is like DR, except that once the damage needed to over come the Carapace is inflicted, it not longer provides protection, as the defense is essentially broken
27) Weapons speeds are more important and weapon damages is increased, for example a dagger does a 1D6. In addition weapon maneuverability is a far bigger factor
28) Spell casting (mostly) has high casting times, and more chances to screw up
29) Critical strikes are separate from critical hits, in that the former are class specific and inflict injuries, while the latter just inflict massive damage
30) Weapons now have a wide variety of qualities, which have different performances. Masterwork are just the most powerful of the lot
31) Magic items are divided into three types, Trinkets which are other wise normal item with a few magical effects, so a trinket bow which shoots fire is just as likely to break as a normal bow, mage touched items which are like “improved” normal weapons, so they do more damage and have special effects but they break easily and cannot gain special effects. Full fledged enchanted items are unique and powerful, and are almost always extremely difficult to destroy.
