When anyone in my world does 11 damage or more on a single blow, they wound. This means that the enemy begins to lose hit points every round from bleeding.
For each 11 damage done, the wound is 1hp per round. If, for example, I hit your character for 47 damage, and your character survives, it would suffer 4hp damage per round thereafter - until the character was healed or it bound wounds.
Binding wounds takes three rounds per degree of the wound; so to bind a 4hp wound would take 12 rounds; however, for each 3 rounds spent, the total loss drops one point. So by round four, you'd be bleeding out 3hp per round, by round seven you'd be bleeding out 2hp and so on.
Goodberry, a healing salve, the recently added druid's vintage or any healing spell will close a wound immediately.
Course, this usually means falling out of combat so that healing can be eaten or applied.
The 12 point alternative is simply that it takes that 1 more hit point to wound the character; and that 47 damage wouldn't quite be enough to cause a 4hp wound, because the multiples are counted out in 12s and not 11s.
Thanks for answering my question, Alexis -- and so promptly too!
ReplyDeleteWhat formula did you use to decide on the number 11? I'm also curious whether starting HP from mass would be counted as different from those gained from experience. For example, I have a level 4 munchkin in my party who managed to accumulate 32 HP, so the loss of the first 11 of the total wouldn't necessarily mean he's bleeding yet. Of course, if I apply a stun rule like the one you mentioned in an earlier post, I could consider internal bleeding. Do you have any mechanics in place for ruptured organs and the like?
ReplyDelete--Tremain Xenos
Tremain,
ReplyDeleteNope, I don't. I consider the bleeding rules and the stun rules disconnected. You don't need to be stunned in order to bleed. Speaking as someone who once slashed open the palm of my hand in the middle of working a cooking shift, I can attest to the fact that my response to the cut was in no way hesitant. I had that wound strapped together with duct tape and inside a rubber glove within 20 seconds; and 12 of those were finding the duct tape.
But whew, felt the shock and blood loss AFTER! hah hah.
So, no ruptured organ rules. The ruptured organ happens when you run out of hit points.
The number '11' was chosen because it is one more damage than a halberd or two-handed sword will do unassisted in AD&D. I don't use damage against giant creatures (a weapon does the same damage against everything), so you need strength or luck (double-damage criticals) or to be a bigger monster if you want to cause wounds.