For the most part, RPGs deal with damage in a numeric sense, with the most common being the Hit Point. There are other games that explore different ways to represent physical damage, but for the most part damage is a resource mechanic. Take too much damage, you run out of that precious resource, and you are dead. In the real world, we never take 10 HP of damage, we suffer something like a punctured lung, a broken arm, etc. When we heal, we don’t just get back our 10 HP, we go through a process where bones mend, and tissue heals. Games don’t often reflect this type of damage or its healing. When asked by a GS reader to ponder that, I decided to take a look at lingering wounds, and how they could fit into a game.
Thanks for the Idea
A quick shout-out to Tim B who asked me to discuss lingering wounds, the pros and cons, how they interact with hit points, and how to prevent a death spiral.
Every Chest Wound Sucks
In terms of an RPG, a lingering wound is a type of damage that is taken in the course of a game, most likely in combat, that persists beyond the scene. The damage goes beyond numeric damage, and often takes the form of a negative modifier to future actions.
For example: while fighting a dragon, our hero gets stepped on, suffers some HP loss and the lingering wound of Cracked Ribs. Those Cracked Ribs result in a -2 to all physical actions until healed.
What’s going on under the hood?
So using the example of Cracked Ribs, let’s look at what is going on in terms of mechanics. First, the lingering damage has to be caused. This will depend on the game system, but if the system has numeric damage, then something special will occur for lingering damage to be assigned. Often this is the result of some kind of special attack, like a critical hit.
Second, the lingering damage has a descriptive element, which defines what the damage looks like. Often this is to emulate some level of realism of a wound that can be taken, such as being stepped on leading to cracked ribs.
Finally, the damage imposes a negative trait to the character, such as a negative modifier to some or all actions or reduced movement, etc. This negative trait is designed to emulate in game mechanics what the descriptive part of the lingering damage described. So a sprained ankle may lead to reduced movement, or a concussion might lead to a -2 to all mental tasks.
So what do Lingering Wounds accomplish in a game? My opinion is that they are there to create a level of realism in combat. Numeric damage is an abstraction and often regarded as being unrealistic. Afterall, look at the damage a typical fighter takes in D&D while remaining fully functional until 0 HP. Contrast that to the lingering wound and the effect of that wound. It is a way to say to a character there are other consequences beyond the loss of your resource (Hit Points) and those consequences have implications to other actions.
The biggest challenge to the Lingering Wound is the death spiral, or the persistent penalty that occurs after the wound is taken, and the possibility that more than one lingering wound can be piled onto a single character, making the character a walking array of negative modifiers. Each lingering wound applied creates a drag on the character, and if penalties stack, that drag increases with each successive wound. While this makes things feel more realistic, from a player perspective this can make the game very punitive and decrease or kill any fun the player is having.
Who Does This Well?
My favorite game for dealing with lingering wounds is Fate Core. For those not familiar with Fate, let me provide a brief explanation. For a more detailed understanding check out the Fate SRD.
Consequences (lingering wounds) are a type of damage a Fate character can take. A consequence comes in the form of an aspect: Cracked Ribs, Bell Rung, Twisted Ankle. As an aspect, the GM can invoke them to gain a bonus when making a roll against the player. The first invoke is free, but after that the GM has to use their limited pool of Fate Points to further invoke the Consequence. In essence the bonus reflects how the Consequence complicated the character’s ability to do or resist something initiated by the GM. Finally, there are three levels of consequences: Minor, Moderate, and Severe, and they naturally heal at different rates, taking a scene, a session, or several sessions.
Here is what I like about this system:
– The consequence is a lingering wound that occurs when the character takes too much damage.
– The consequence lasts for a certain amount of time (depending on level) and then goes away (provided you did something to start the healing)
– It does not impose a constant negative modifier, but rather the GM decides when to use it and not use it, and using it comes at a cost.
Where Do They Fit?
I think that Lingering Wounds are a fine mechanic, but not a good fit for every RPG. The mechanic fits best for games that have a gritty tone. A game like Dungeons & Dragons, where the characters are heroic, is not a good fit for lingering wounds. It imposes a level of grit that runs counter to the tone of the game. On the other hand, a noir detective game is a great place for lingering wounds, where we want to see our character suffer a bit while chasing down the clues.
I think if you wanted to put them into an existing game, I would look to see what that added level of realism brings, and make sure it’s fitting to the game and setting and not just a new way to penalize characters.
Some possible uses for Lingering Wounds
So if I was going to hack a lingering wound system into a game, I might go about it something like this…
Escape a fight at a cost
When the players want to escape a combat, that is just end it and say they got away, then one or more of them could take a lingering wound, but no more hit point loss. That lingering wound would last for some number of scenes and then go away.
You can escape the horde of skeletons, but Kor twists an ankle and is at half movement for the rest of the day.
Gain a in-combat bonus
When a player wants a combat bonus they can push their bodies past their limits. That injury would last for some duration and then go away.
You get a +4 on this attack, but in doing so you pulled your shoulder, and all your subsequent attacks are at -1 for the rest of the day.
Succeed with a cost
This is the fail forward mechanic, a way to succeed even when the character has failed their roll. In this case the character pushes themselves to succeed but at a cost.
You failed your roll to cast the spell, but Xanar can succeed at the casting if you are willing to take the Mentally Strained condition and a -2 to all spell checks for the rest of the day.
A few tips about hacking this into a system:
1. Decide on how a lingering wound gets applied. Often a critical attack is a good place to hook this into the system.
2. Decide on how many lingering wounds a character can have, or if modifiers stack. Remember each one creates a drag, and decide how much of a drag you want a character to have.
3. Figure out how advanced/magical healing works with lingering wounds. If Cure Light Wounds can remove any lingering wound, then they are not as severe, and may not have that level of grit you are looking for.
Wrap Up and Questions
Lingering Wounds are an interesting mechanic that can help to make things feel more realistic in your game, and provide lasting consequences to a character’s actions. When done poorly the system can seem punitive and frustrating. Like any mechanic it works best when it supports the goals of the game and the setting.
Are you running a game with lingering wounds? Is it native to the game? Was it hacked in? How do the players react to lingering wounds?
I share your love for how Fate handles lingering wounds. I’ve actually been toying with ways to introduce them to a more HP-based system. You could volunteer to take a lingering wound in order to gain back a certain amount of HP. It gives the player a little more agency to decide, “You know, I can suffer with cracked ribs for six weeks, or I can die. Let’s go with cracked ribs!”
On a similar note, I noticed a while ago that D&D has no provision for scars. In fact, with magical healing being so prevalent, scars are probably less common among experienced adventurers than your common farmer. On a related note, I noticed that the combat system in Rifts had no provision for losing a limb, eye, etc., so it was highly unlikely that a character would ever need to actually acquire cyberware.
My solution was to apply long-term or permanent damage whenever the character went below 0 HP. Depending on how far down you went, what kind of damage it was, etc. you could end up with a dashing (and distinctive) scar, an old war wound that hurt when it was about to rain, or a missing eye. Negative damage wouldn’t kill you, but the player could decide to let the character die instead of coming back with the accrued penalties.
not played Fate, so its nice to hear this is coming back, I recall Millenniums End, Kult, and and a few other smaller games did this quite well (Stocks lite was a niche little game that had superb injury rules: As I recall, all injuries receive were divided by your ‘damage level’ to generate an an ‘all action modifier’ and you died when your AAM hit -10. Different sized creatures/people calculated their DL, and therefore their final AAM per injury, differently; very neat).
as stated above though the style of game is really important – some genres/games (most recently Chuubo I think) you actually gain a bonus to your actions as you get injured 🙂
Aces and Eights is a pretty modern system that does a good job of incorporating specific wounds and hit locations into the core game. Combat’s a little slow, and it’s a world without magic, so that broken bone penalty can be many weeks of play.
I too like Fate’s consequences as aspects. I should probably be more ruthless about exploiting/compelling them. It comes out of a fixed budget in Fate Core, and later rewards the player for taking the compel,
Often when you describe a specific wound, players will play it up–at least until it’s too inconvenient to the plot, or would derail the game. If you’re interested in easing into it, spend your next session describing wounds specifically and praising players when they play up the limit. Sometimes, no system is needed, just attention.
Of course, “play it up – at least until it’s too inconvenient to the plot” is a time-honored cinematic device. Just reference, oh, any action movie ever made.
Exactly.
Sorry if I’m a bit late on this but if you want to see another great execution on how lingering wounds can work, take a look at Crimson Exodus (or its settingless system Fatasy DICE) by Radical Approach.
I really think the author did a great job in taking the game far from the death spiral and avoid player frustration, even if recovering and gritty details stem for a definitely grim&gritty game. Which fits the mood of CE by the way.
I think that system is really one of the most overlooked indie product ever written. I guess it pays its toll to the almost total absence of marketing effort.