First of all, my game uses a HP system.  However, if a character suddenly suffers serious damage, they gain what I call a "Mortal Wound."  Mortal Wounds cause the character to take damage every Diurnal Phase* until treated. It's possible to live several days after taking a mortal wound, without treatment.  With continual treatment, they can survive forever. Also, a character must suffer at least 1 "Mortal Wound" before they can die.  If a character suffers from 5 mortal wounds simultaneously, he will die.  Mortal Wounds take exceptional healing and resource sacrifice to treat. 

Now that you know all the mechanical/flavor effects of "Mortal Wounds" do you think they are inappropriately named?  My worry is that I'm using too strong of a descriptor (Mortal) to describe something that isn't necessarily fatal or critical.  Most characters will be accompanied by a healer, that while not necessarily (experienced) enough to remove the wound, will be able to keep them alive indefinitely until they can find a talented healer. 

Also, you can feel free to comment on the mechanic itself.

*Days are broken into 6 Diurnal Phases

Bleeding or Open Wound?

So, is there no way to ever get rid of such a thing?

Given that healing is readily available, why bother with the wounds at all? Does taking such a serious hit remove a character from combat, or diminish their ability to fight so badly that it might as well?

In some other games with similar sudden/significant damage mechanics, such a hit is called a Takedown, Downed, or Out of the Fight. However, I'm not sure whether this applies to your game; it depends on whether the injury permits the character to keep fighting or not.

If he or she can keep fighting, then maybe Trauma (if you want a clinical feel) or Agony (if you want to go with the character's experience).

Best, Ron

@sound

you can get rid of it, but it requires like a month of treatment, or a rare healer, like only one in a thousand. 

@ron

it diminishes their ability to fight severely. Effectively, it reduces their chance of success by -10% for each 'mortal wound.'  Of course, they die if they receive 5.  They can still fight, however. Every 4 hours, they take up to 8d6 damage from blood loss and trauma.  Characters have about 40 hp, so mortal wounds would take somebody who's at full health (unlikely, but possible) to death in about 7 hours. 

The way I imagined them were like, wounds that would open at the slightest agitation, that weren't clotting, that were internal bleeding, etc.  Combat is supposed to be a risk.

Healing in the world is a combination of actual healing techniques, combined with a trickle of magic to speed the process up.  To remove a mortal wound, it requires a character who's specialized in healing to achieve 70% of "maximum planned level" of character progression I've written.  It also requires a huge resource expenditure (they could remove perhaps 5 of them in a day, but then they'd be too fatigued to do any other healing.)  In comparison, a similar level mage could suddenly create a catapult from nothing, create a powerful undead warrior, or grow roots and vines to tear down a section of city wall.

Grievous wounds.  That's what I'd call 'em.  'Cause everything else is just a fleshwound, right?

I'm partial to the underused "Grave Wound" myself.[1]  In this case it gives the appropriate balance between severity and possibility to live on and recover.  A mortal wound means that -- barring a miracle -- you won't be living much longer.

However, I'd ask what purpose this mechanic serves, and whether there might be another mechanic that serves the same and is more, well, fun.  Personally, i think it's a downer to get long-term and near-incurable "You suck now" effects, but I don't know the aim of the system in which it's embedded.

James
[1] "I'm afraid he suffered some grave wounds on the battlefield today -- we don't know if he will survive."

"Deep wound" is used by some games, but I think you're overthinking this - "Mortal Wound" is quite passable, and certainly that's how most of our fiction handles "mortal" wounds. It's an exception when heroes actually die of something that is "mortal". More importantly, though, I can't think of a game that would have been skuttled by minor flavour problems in their terminology.

If I had to change that to get some sleep at night, I'd probably focus on the permanency. "Permanent Injury" or some such would be pretty clear.

We've been talking about your game before, and this mechanic seems logical in that context, so this is looking good in that respect. If I understand you correctly, when you say that most heroes will be accompanied by healers most of the time, this is because the players choose to create a healer character, not because the setting provides NPCs as a matter of course to compensate for an overly-deadly combat system. It'll be interesting to see how you're going to make playing such a healer interesting; unless the adventures have lots of "save the princess from a mysterious illness" type turns, I'd rather take the "catapult from nothing" than being able to heal individual characters. The catapult at least has comedic potential.

Yes, to the part about a player being a healer. Also, please keep in mind that while these wounds are extremely difficult to recover from, they aren't absolutely permanent.

Wow, I've gotten a lot of recommendations that I hadn't thought of before.  Just for personal reference, here they are: Grave Wound, Grievous Wound, Deep Wound, Permanent Wound, Open Wound.  (Bleeding Wound isn't on the list because I have a spell by a similar name.)  I feel like "Grievous Wound" flows off the tongue better than "Grave Wound", is this just my imagination?  These may be my top two choices, but I can't decide on either one right now.

I think part of the reason I feel less enthusiastic about mortal wound, is that you used to have less of them before you died (3.)  Play test sessions made me realize I had to increase it a few, because it was too easy for characters to get the six foot treatment during the normal course of a single battle.  Walking around with 4 mortal wounds, while you are extremely close to death, kind of feels ridiculous. (I keep thinking back to Frodo's ring wraith wound as the type of wound these represent.)

@ Jag
Mortal Wounds are to make players think twice about getting into any combat, especially at lower levels.  It also helps to tie in a mechanical "time to go home" effect, since they will probably have to travel to a capital city to have anything done about them. (Or take a several month long break and wait for it to heal "naturally" as a healer keeps them from going to the great beyond)  The best way to think about them is as a "spiral of diminishing resources", as the group healer will spend more of his healing resource keeping the group alive, therefore not being able to heal up very many "flesh wounds" each day.  Also, the characters are less effective, so they're going to suffer more from combat. 

I hope J reads this again, this post really exemplifies the gamist element. :P

Sorry if this is incoherent, I'm litterally shaking from a caffeine crash I was maintaining all day, that's now wearing off. Yay! Time for sleep.

Dear god, don´t talk GNS to me, that always ends in tears.

I immediately thought that the wound was something to keep combat risky; I guess while field medicine cure "minor" wounds immediately after combat, these should remind the player that every combat brings the chance to die. They are designed, it seems, to be annoying.

Here´s another:
Severe wound.

I like "grave" and "grievous" the most. Another idea would be to go full color; categorize them somehow, but don´t note on the player sheet, "3 XXX wounds", but write down under the label "grave wounds": "3 crushed rips and a bleeding lung" and "cut triceps" and "shattered wrist", each representing one of these wounds. To me, if I actually have to imagine what my character looks and feels like, I´ll treat him a lot more carefull. Also, pretty much everybody loves gore.

"spiral of diminishing resources"

I do like that J, I can see how players would be a lot more careful with their characters when they're focusing on what their characters are actually experiencing.  Also, it allows the GM to use a wound table, which I notice a lot of GMs and players both enjoy.

Personally, I dislike those tables. Way I´m doing it in combat-heavy games is, when you attack, you narrate how and where. If you wound, the type and location of the wound depend on where and how you hit. I say, I aim for his head, if I kill him, it´s because I smash his skull in. If I merely nick him, I hit his ear or something. So if you got a wound from my attack on your head, you´d write "brain trauma" or "gapping neck wound". This also encourages narration on attacks.
On the other hand, yes, many people seem to like tables.

Also, you could just call these things "wounds"; everybody else is just a nick or a slight cut and you don´t care for it much.

Hi everyone,

I suggest that we focus on David's game and not get wrapped up in what any of us do or do not like in other games.

David, the reason people are flailing and falling back on their own preferences is that we have no idea what the basic color of your game is. Victorian adventure? Dark and smoky fantasy? Hot pink sex in the 1980s? That, ultimately, will be your best guide toward the terminology that will suit the mechanic.

Best, Ron

Thank you, Ron.

Describing my game in terms of 'dark and smoky' or 'pulp' is difficult, since none of the genres seem to fit exactly.  However, I would venture to call it 'gritty' and it is definitely recognizable as 'fantasy.'  As far as the players I was describing as "Liking wound tables" I was referring to the players I enjoy gaming with, and are my target market.  Obviously, things like wound tables will depend on the audience. I would also like to mention that some tables can be perceived as fun by players, while other tables might be boring or cumbersome to the same players. 

Unless someone feels they have a great insight to the topic at hand (The flavor of "Mortal Wounds"), I'd like to consider this topic closed.  Anything else can be sent to me as a PM. Thank you, guys.

What's this about hot pink sex in the 1980's? I was a youngin' back then and had no idea of such things.

An idea presented by me only as a contrast to the usual RPG tropes for which the text claims realism for the rules. It's not a topic of discussion in and of itself, unless of course it were in fact the basis for a given game idea.

Best, Ron

I chose to sit out of this discussion for a bit, to see where it would head...then I come back a couple of days later and see things about the thread being closed without some kind of dramatic insight.

I guess it's time to step in with a couple of kick-starters.

Firstly, when I hear the term Mortal Wounds, I think of injuries that can't be healed naturally. If you don't get them looked at by a proper physician, they WILL KILL YOU. This doesn't necessarily mean that the injuries have nasty debilitating effects (at least not at first), but they tend to magnify other wounds, and generally make healing a more dangerous prospect. White Wolf kind of did this with it's regular wounds versus aggravated wounds (this concept has been touched on by a few people in this discussion).

Secondly, I like the idea that a character can only be permanently killed if they have suffered at least 1 "mortal wound". It gives players an idea of whether things are dangerous or not.

Now for my 2 cents...

Wound tables remind me of my old days with Rolemaster, under one GM it was great...the combat was quick and freeflowing, we worked with the concept that characters went into combat and attacked wherever they saw a gap in their opponents defenses. If the character got a critical and managed to roll on one of those really cool "Critical Hit" damage tables, we just ran with the idea that this was a really bad breach in the opponents defenses and that's the damage we managed to do when we broke through it.

Another GM tried to allow a more strategical and micro-managed style of combat. Hit high, hit low, swing from the left or right...then when applying these tables there were certain things that just didn't make sense.

I aimed low, but I got a head critical...what the??

If you're going to use them, make the intention of the mortal wound tables clear.

If you're favouring a strategic and micro-managed combat experience, then maybe a bunch of critical tables favouring different parts of the body would be good. If special weapons are a focal point of the experience, then a special table for each weapon type might be an option.

Don't resort to using these tables for every strike between adversaries, that get's really tedious and interrupts the flow of play. But I think using these tables to manifest specific "Mortal Wounds" in the game would be a great idea. You might get to roll on such a table if you roll a natural high on your dice, or maybe you get to roll on them if you beat your opponent's defence by X points.

Lesser wounds can be narrated out by players, they don't really have a major impact on the flow of the game. But these critical "Mortal Wounds" deal more significant damage in exchange for narrowing down the narrative options. Players might still be able to described what the appearances of their action is, but the results of the action are determined by the table result.

No matter how you were doing it, I wouldn't use more than 6 or so Mortal Wounds for each table.

If you were using a d6, this would evenly distribute the results.

If you were using d10s, I consider the idea that even results on the table are determined by the weapon while odd results are determined by the attack intentions.

eg. Using a sword and aiming high

2: Slashed artery
4: Sliced Muscle
6: Organ Puncture
8: Massive Bleeding
10: Limb Removed

1: Lower Arm Hit
3: Upper Arm Hit
5: Torso Hit
7: Neck Hit
9: Head Hit

If you switch weapons or change where your aiming, then you substitute in a different set of odds or evens.

I specifically haven't included suggestions for how these types of critical hit might affect the mechanics of the combat system, because we don't have any indication yet of how the combat system works.

I'd also include the idea that anything can produce mortal wounds. It's just far more likely for a sword to do such things than a fist (unless that fist is held by a master of martial arts), and more likely still that a gun will produce such a blow.

But my most important point here, and I can't iterate it enough...

If you're going to use a table in the regular play of your game, "keep the table special and rare". Make sure the incidents generated through it have significance in the game world, it's once the table gets referenced too often that people start to find it boring.

Also, I'd make sure to keep these "mortal wounds" in genre. If you're running a martial arts game, allow things like plucking out people's eyes...watch some movies based on a similar style to what your trying to achieve, read some books along these lines, forget about "realism", most people roleplay for a bit of escapism, and they'll play with your system to push their escapism into the world you've developed. Make your wounds reflect your world's version of reality, not necessarily ours.

I hope that's a little bit insightful to the topic at hand.

V

Wow, what a well thought out post, Vulpinoid!

Mechanic wise, there aren't rules for hitting specific body parts.  A lot of games include rules for "called shots."  While this makes sense for guns and bows and such, I feel it doesn't make sense for sword fighting, where you strike at any opening. There are special attacks that sort of target body areas, like "choke" and "trip." I've decided to explain away called shots by explaining that they are these "special attacks."

In game terms, Mortal Wounds deal damage every few hours, inflict a -1 penalty to all rolls and are needed to kill something.  Unconscious characters are easier to wound mortally with a coup de grace type attack. Mortal wounds are usually caused by a very hard hitting blow.  A critical hit might accomplish this, or the great sword wielding knight might accomplish this almost every attack.  Usually the players have enough synergy going that they deal mortal wounds easily, whereas there are generally so many monsters making so many attacks, the players are doomed to receive their own.

I really like the idea of the table determining location OR "effect" with the player.  Any table I include would be optional, but for "basic play" I would have some recommendations.  The first recommendation is to use the table on players whenever they are mortally wounded.  Using the narration control tokens, they can of course, determine this themselves.  The second recommendation is to *only* use the table when fighting very special enemies, but it would be better to just skip the table and narrate something appropriately.  Really, I like the table only to determine what happens to a player, to get them deeper into the experience.  It's much more personal to know that you're limping along because of a broken rib, than to just have "Mortal Wounds: 1" 

I like your proposition David. "Mortal Wounds" is a good name. There may be a better one - proposed in one of the posts above but this one is also fine I think. As you mentioned in one of the first posts of the topic the wounds are serious. What else underlines it more then a strong name? I belive "mortal" is the right word. Those wounds can get one killed.

Also the wound system looks quite cool. I belive it can be very playable. RPG game is mostly about playabilty in my oppinion, and part of the game style and climate is fighting system, in which wounds play often vital role. They set the level of realism, which can be important to define the genre.

My first thoughts about the idea is that the number of wounds changeing can be used to give battle some more tastes.
If I understood correctly one can get more then 1 mortal wound in a single turn, and more then one mortal wound in a single attack.
5 mortal wounds kill. But 4 may make player unconcious, 3 unable to move and so on. All this may force him to take very hard "thoughness" tests.
This is very cool couse it may force player to train his thoughness, use armor or to invent other ways, which may be something like looking for or creating painkiller drugs that can let you fight no metter the wounds you take. In other words this is good idea which can develop many other aspects of the game.

There may be various character builds - same as is cRPGs. There are such in all the games. I belive an RPG should let player build compleately unique characters so builds should be infinite. The idea you present is good from that point of view as it extends also this the builds: A player may go to two aspects of combat which can be developed further. One in which he can build a character that is thougher and may get more hits in combat - he is good couse he is moderate fencer but can fight longer, other in which player can take small ammount of wounds but his points are put in fencing. It his hard to get past his defences and once you will... We know what happens. The system let players take such aspects which is cool.

Those are my thoughts. Hope I stay in the toppic. What I am thinking about are also combos.. Maybe there are ways, trained skills or abilities that let you deal few mortal wounds at once.

> Also my question is what will happen if a character get two mortal wounds in one location, e.g. head. Does he get killed right away?

> Can one buy as skill or trait which enables him to recive more mortal wounds without getting killed? Like 6-7. Is there a rece possesing such a skill - thougher then other.

> Some poisons may inflict mortal wound without dealing body damage. Mortal wound if I understand right is just "really serious damge".

Cool idea. It will work for sure!