Specific Injuries

I wiped out on my bicycle yesterday morning and suffered an abrasion somewhat mitigated by formerly sturdy trousers sacrificing their right knee in my defence. Since this happened midway between home and campus, I thought it would make more sense to continue onward and stop into the campus dispensary as soon as I arrived, rather than return home and probably not find a bandage big enough. Besides, I reasoned, the campus nurse worked at a primary school before; she'd probably dealt with hundreds of skinned knees.

 

So I ambled in, a bit worse for wear, only to find a sign on the nurse's door saying she was off for the day. 

 

Sometimes it's quite easy to use the minor inconveniences of real life as inspiration for the game. Simply by amplifying the severity of the wound and removing the recourse to modern antiseptic methods, the treatment of hit points lost in battle can become an adventure in itself.

 

I once heard, incidentally, that once that a man in New York City skinned his knee on the sidewalk and contracted something resembling ebola, but I prefer to think that this is a literal urban legend. On the other hand, I've also heard that Henry V took an arrow to the face during battle and his surgeons successfully removed it. Just to one side of his nose, if I remember correctly.

 

Here in the comfort of my office all I had to do was splash some peroxide on my knee and beg a bandage from a colleague's first-aid kit. Today I'm almost normal.

 

We tend to gloss over a lot of the combat injuries because they're a logistical bother, but the spreadsheets used in our campaign do have spaces to record scarring and maiming. This doesn't quite match the spirit of the original rules. The 2e Dungeon Master's Guide spells out its comic-book style approach to deadly combat in a wee section entitled 'Specific Injuries (Optional Rule)':

 

The AD&D combat system does not call for specific wounds--scars, broken bones, missing limbs, and the like. And in most cases they shouldn't be applied. Remember that this is a game of heroic fantasy. If characters were to suffer real-life effects from all their battles and combats, they would quickly be some of the sorriest and most depressing characters in the campaign world. It's hard to get excited when your character is recovering from a broken leg and a dislocated shoulder suffered in a fall off a 15-foot wall. It is not recommended that characters suffer specific injuries. In general, stick with the basic pool of hit points.

 

Right, because the game is so much more convincing and engrossing when we put ourselves in the place of Gumby superheroes who bounce back from all sorts of damage, rathern than real men who value their blood and limbs enough to try their damnedest not to lose them. 

 

In particular, the assertion that seasoned fighters would be 'the sorriest and most depressing characters in our campaign world' seems to assume that even if we allow specific injuries to PCs, we have to keep all of our NPCs Gumbies. I can't speak for anyone else, but I might find it difficult to repress snide remarks if I played in what was supposed to be a medieval world and didn't see people missing eyes, ears, hands, and legs with some frequency. It's the same school of thought that removes characters' needs to eat and excrete, or even makes death less than permanent. Are none of the people in our fantasy world supposed to wrinkle and grey as they age, either?

 

At the start of our game plenty of the characters have rolled the loss of fingers and other appendages from accidents before the game even started. (One of the most heroic characters we've had in the campaign, in fact, began the game having lost half of his right hand in his father's shop, and in at least one combat, this turned out to be a blessing: Having been forced to learn to use his sword left-handed, he had the literal upper hand when storming a castle and fighting its defenders up a spiral stairway.)

 

It should make perfect sense that if characters have lived through enough combat to have attained a considerable level, they should be scarred and limping from previous injuries. Unfortunately, we haven't yet had a character live past his early twenties. When they've been hit hard enough to receive a permanent scar or broken bone, they're usually dead. Surviving long enough to evince serious battle wounds, then, should be something all players should aspire for their characters to achieve.

Armour

I’ve had players who took it for granted that it was always better to wear armour than not, and assume they’ll always have it on, whether walking through town, making a voyage by ship (when falling overboard should obviously be fatal), or sleeping. Putting aside for a moment that falling asleep in armour is highly improbable and showing up in a crowded market decked out in military gear would have the local guard surrounding and interrogating the party in no time, let’s focus on the relative merits and demerits of various types of armour in the context for which they’re meant: Combat.

The following benefits and drawbacks of armour in combat are meant to be included in the upcoming revised version of House Rules for the Shropesyre Campaign. The list below describes the range of protection likely to be encountered throughout the British Isles; other items may be encountered if the party travels to other regions, and specific attributes of such can be included later. As AC is already tied to increases in level rather than types of armour, the latter are considered to reduce HP of damage taken by a percentage according to their basic type.

Here is the breakdown for shields, armour, and other protective items.

Shields: Use Hit Location die. HP damage reductions apply only to hits to torso or shield arm.

Small wooden shield (buckler): 25% reduction, rounded down.

Small metal shield: 25% reduction, rounded up.

Large metal shield: 50% reduction, rounded down.

Full body shield: Generally, the only body parts exposed during melee are the sword arm and part of the face necessary to see: Hits to the sword arm are treated as normal, while the face is considered to have an AC bonus of 4 for 50% concealment. Hits to any other location are automatically negated.

Armour: If used in conjunction with a shield, the following apply only to hits taken to areas other than torso or shield arm. For hits to either of these two areas, damage is first reduced by the shield and then again by the armour itself.

Leather or hide armour: 10% damage reduction to all covered areas, rounded up.

Studded leather armour: 20% damage reduction to all covered areas, rounded up.

Chain mail: 50% damage reduction, rounded down.

Plate mail: 60% damage reduction, rounded up.

Full plate (rare item, not normally available for purchase in England): 75% damage reduction, rounded up.

Shields and armour used together offer combined benefits. Full plate armour used in conjunction with a shield offer total protection against blows except in the case of critical hits. A critical hit to the shield arm is considered to break the shield or otherwise render it useless. Furthermore, any critical hits dealing 12 or more points of damage to any location are considered to knock the combatant over. Falling in plate mail armour from a standing position causes 1d3 HP of damage. Falling from horseback in plate armour causes this 1d3 HP of damage in addition to the 1d6 HP of damage ordinarily accorded to such a fall.

Additionally, because armour restricts agility in combat, the following penalties to THAC0 will be applied when any of these types of armour are worn (points by which THAC0 is raised):

Leather or hide: None

Studded leather: +1

Chain mail: +2

Plate mail: +3

Full plate: +4

Finally, wearing or carrying armour while traveling will considerably slow the character down due to additional encumbrance. However, carrying it would be the better choice unless combat seems imminent: Tentatively, I refer to a chart for HP of discomfort damage the heavier metal types of armour cause after a certain period. The reality is that after a few drinks and a number of variables to hold in my head during melee, I tend to forget all about it—but, be warned, I’m not likely to forget to roll for fungal infections and anal fistula if your character is covered in mud, has been sweating profusely, or got caught in the downpour.

Confrontation

One of our players highly recommends this series, but I never managed to get my hands on any full-length episodes. I finally got around to searching for some clips, and found this one particularly pertinent to the period in which our current trial world is set and explores one sort of encounter the party might face. Ignoring for a moment the ridiculous historical inaccuracy of the costumes, this scene is interesting because it provides some insight as to how two the interaction between two groups meeting for the first time might escalate into combat.

 

Synopsis: The captain of the guard at the shore of the Kingom of Northumbria (referring to himself anachronistically as the 'sheriff') rides up with his men to a party of very obvious Viking raiders to find out what they're doing there. He's the only one communicating with the Viking leader, Ragnar, and his side becomes increasingly tense while the Viking side becomes increasingly bloodthirsty, and eventually they clash.

First, it seems a rather blatant tension-building device to have Ragnar conversant in Aenglisc while the 'sherrif' doesn't seem to understand whatever North Germanic language the Vikings are meant to be speaking. The leader of a shoreline patrol group would likely have been chosen partly for his ability in one or more languages spoken by people likely to land at that shore, whereas a leader of Vikings should probably have been chosen more for his capacity to lead in battle than for his communication ability. Conveniently for our purposes, however, AD&D has a character's INT score tied to both strategic ability and number of languages in which he can communicate.

As the conversation opens, the captain asks if the Vikings are merchants. 'Yes, traders, yes!' Ragnar asserts. Sure. That's why we're armed to the teeth and have no visible merchandise of any kind. Some of the Vikings already have their hands on their weapons, and a particularly eager one nearby, called Rollo (apparently Ragnar's brother, according to Wikipedia), is growing increasingly suspicious of dialogue he can't understand. He soon insists that the sheriff's invitation is a trap.

The idea of the volatile band of ruffians being somewhat beyond their leader's control is probably realistic, although obviously exaggerated for effect here. The degree of hubris the vikings express, and their confidence in their fighting ability, seem far-fetched considering they've just spent weeks at sea and have no armour, while the Anglo-Saxons have some chain mail and helmets, freshly polished weapons, and two horses. Nonetheless, the Vikings are bloodthirsty and bent on doing what they came to do, namely kill people and take their stuff.

One Anglo-Saxon soldier's suggestion to 'offer them money to go away' is a transparent reference to the policy of later Anglo-Saxon kings of bribing the Vikings not to invade--in retrospect, a suicidally stupid tactic, but as Machiavelli wasn't yet around to offer sagacious foreign policy advice, they're forgiven.

As a peace offering, the sheriff gives Rollo an amulet he's wearing, which inspires another Viking to step forward and snatch a cross from another Anglo-Saxon's neck, which act of agression immediately causes the other Anglo-Saxons to draw their swords. As the sheriff tries to tell them to stand down, he is struck down by Rollo's battle axe. All the Vikings, including Ragnar, rush forward and slay nearly all the Anglo-Saxons, leaving only one to escape on horseback.

 

I've had parties behave in completely lawless ways before, usually with things going significantly less well for them than it went for the Vikings. Generally, local law enforcement has showed up in superior numbers well prepared for a fight, and the PCs have done things ranging from taunting them verbally (when they spoke mutually intelligible languages) to brandishing swords or attacking them outright (when no verbal communication was possible). This has resulted in the untimely deaths of more than one treasured character, and is a strategy generally hazardous to PC health unless, as here, they clearly possess the superior fighting power, and are prepared to meet the consequences when, as here, a survivor among their newly-made enemies has retreated to alert the country of the party's hostile presence.

Toward an Adequate Set of Combat Rules

My sincere hope is that if I keep honing this, I'll manage to get it right one day. By getting it right I mean making it understandable to everyone playing, reflecting what we know about the laws of physics, and simple enough that I know the rules cold, don't need to look at any charts, and can do all the calculations in my head right off.

It's generally accepted that needs to be fast-paced. During combat, the DM is visualising what's happening in detail and considering a number of possible consequences to each action. He is sometimes rattling off answers to questions at the rate of several a minute to players who don't want to--and shouldn't have to--wait for him to look up the answer. He is often planning for what might happen after combat. He will frequently be drunk. Modifiers are lovely in that they help explain variables and contingencies of the sort that happen when people are trying to kill each other, but they should be kept to a minimum at least until the DM knows the system like the back of his proverbial hand. 

Amour Class (AC) = Defence

I know it's been explained and house ruled into meaningful things by much better DMs than I, some of whom have blogs that are much more worth reading, but the idea that wearing armour makes you more difficult to hit is patently absurd. I've tried to compensate by saying things like like 'The sword blow glances off your gauntlet' in order to convey what would be likely to happen on an unsuccessful attack roll, but to paraphrase Russell Glasser, in order to count as an explanation, it has to make things more understandable. And our players are sometimes drunk. What I propose, then, is that AC simply represent defence and that it improve in tandem with THAC0. A fifth-level fighter, for example, would have an AC of 5, making him quite hard to hit regardless of what armour he's wearing. This should be quite hard to attain, as no character in our campaign has yet survived past fifth level. We might reason that there are rather few of such level in the world. 

Hit Points = 1/2 CON

At the suggestion of our resident Simulacres player, HP are taken directly from a character's Constitution score, rounded up to the nearest full hit point. (We toyed with the prospect of making HP equivalent to CON, but that seemed too high in consideration of the amount of damage most weapons do.) Characters begin to suffer significantly at -1 HP, losing 10% of their ability scores at each lost point, are dead at -10. (It shouldn't be hard to figure out from whom I pilfered this rule.)

HP are determined at character creation, and they don't change. This reflects the reality that people are harder to hit as they gain more combat experience, but if they are hit, they suffer the same damage as everyone else.

Somebody suggested that this makes things difficult for mages, who have to wait three levels before their defence improves. In fact, the average rate of HP improvement by third level under the standard rules is 7.5 for the mage (1d4 average of 2.5, multiplied by 3) versus the fighter's 15 (1d10 average of 5, multiplied by 3), so our system clearly gives him the better deal. 

Bleeding to Death

If a character is reduced to -5 HP or more, he will lose an additional 1 HP every five minutes until his wound is bound to stop the haemorrhaging. When he's no longer losing blood, the DM rolls a d20 to determine the severity of infection, unless the wound is treated with an herbal poultice or the like (infections start at rolls of 2 below CON and become progressively worse, with a natural 20 being fairly severe gangrene). 

Armour Defence

In our most recent trial setting, the only real defences that exist are hide armour, chain mail, and shields. Hide armour absorbs 1 HP of damage and is then torn. Either chain mail or a shield will deflect 50% damage on its own, rounded up; both used together will deflect 75% damage, rounded down. (A hard enough blow against one's shield will still hurt, and the shock could even break a bone.)

Chain mail quality is divided into three broad categories at this point. On every successful hit, mail of standard construction is torn on a 1 in 1d6; of fine construction in 1d12; and mastercrafted in 1d20.

The standard metal helmet absorbs 50% damage only if the hit location die reads 'Head'. At any rate, full damage is taken on a hit to any unprotected location. 

Modified Attack Rolls

Also per our resident Simulacres player, character may expend extra effort trying to hit exposed body parts. Obviously, this only works with armour that has significant gaps, but the only real armour we're working with presently is a chain mail shirt, which leaves the lower legs, head, and neck. At a 2 point THAC0 penalty, combatants may aim for any of these he chooses. At a 5 point THAC0 penalty, a combatant may attempt to behead his enemy; on a successful roll, hit location and armour are both ignored, and full damage is automatically sustained. 

When we ended our last session due to time constraints, the party was hot on the trail of a perceived enemy; if they find what they were looking for this next time, it will offer an excellent opportunity to test the system.