This post was made as a submission for Dice Goblin's Adventure Calendar Jam 2023 where we post one short RPG idea every day until December 24. Here are my previous entries: day one, two, three, four, five and six

Here are a couple of ways to model pain, stress, fear and panic - woefully underrepresented parts of gritty adventuring life - in a simple, player-facing way with little bookkeeping and minutiaea. Injury rules based on the great Block, Dodge, Parry by Dice Goblin and idealized for use with Into the Odd-like games.

Pain

Combat is dirty business. When you get really hurt, pain starts to pile up.

1. If an attack brings you down to exactly 0HP, you get Hurt but keep fighting;
2. If an attack would bring you down to negative HP, Save or you're put into a Dying state, where you can only crawl, mutter words and lament your fate. If you pass your save, you get Hurt but keep fighting instead. If you take more than your STR (CON for six-stat systems) as damage in a single hit, Save or Die outright instead - if you pass, you're put into a Dying State;
3. Some sources of damage bypass hit protection (HP) and go straight to flesh: traps, sneak attacks, some spells or magical attacks. In these cases, you get Hurt regardless of your current HP. There might be a save to avoid the injury.
4. If you're Dying and you suffer damage, get Hurt, or are not tended to by another character in one hour, you're dead for good.

When you get Hurt, write down one injury and it's location in your topmost empty inventory slot. If you have no empty inventory slots, drop or destroy the topmost, not held item and write the injury in it's place.

If you get Hurt but you're already injured, you can increment an existing injury of the same type by one level instead of writing in a new one. A level one injury heals after a week of rest, a level two injury heals after a month, and a level three injury never heals - it's permanent.

After an injury fully heals, you can opt to cross it out instead of erasing it to make it a Scar. Scars take up the inventory slot, but whenever you take a Scar...

• You increase your max HP by 1d6, up to a maximum of 18.
• You pick one attribute, and try to roll over it on a d20 - if you succeed, you improve it by two points, and if you fail, by one point instead, up to maximum of 18.

For every unique injury you have, you take 1 Pain. Pain makes everything harder:

• Your current Pain score is added to the fumble range on a D20 (e.g., If you have three points of pain, you always fail on a roll of 1-4);
• If you fail a D6 skill roll, roll again: if you roll equal to or under your current pain score, you fumble spetacularly.

Injuries that are not tended to as a Camp Action¹ risk infection: Save with a -1 for every unique, non treated Injury at the end of the day or you get a Disease².

Stress

Adventuring takes a toll.

1. When you witness something truly terrible, like a companion falling in battle or an eldritch horror, you take one Stress;
2. Every sixth dungeon turn, the party picks one character to take a Stress. Hirelings don't track Stress, so if the party picks a Hireling, they immediately roll for Morale;
3. When you make camp for the night after a day of crawling or combat, you take one Stress unless you use up one of your Camp Actions¹ for relaxing;

If you take no Stress today, you can naturally heal two points of Stress at the start of the next day. Relaxation and pleasure might heal more.

Like Pain, Stress makes everything harder:

• Your current Stress score is added to the fumble range on a D20;
• If you fail a D6 skill roll, roll again: if you roll equal to or under your current Stress score, you fumble spetacularly.
• Intoxicants can take the edge off, even if temporarily - as long as you're High on something, ignore Stress penalties. Some substances have downsides and a "crash" after the effects wear off.

Fear & Panic

Fear is the mind killer.

1. Fear is a condition. You're either Afraid or you're not;
2. Whenever something would make you take one point of Stress, you can opt to become Afraid instead;
3. While you're Afraid, you don't count for Intiative³. Characters who are Afraid are prioritized whenever a harmful effect or attack calls for a random target;
4. Characters who are Afraid get to push themselves into performing better, at a risk - you can push yourself to get [+]⁴ on your next roll, whatever it is, but if you still fail, you immediately Panic.
5. All characters cease to be Afraid after a night's sleep.

Panic works like the Devil's Bargain in Blades in The Dark and other games inspired by it. The player and the GM negotiate on what exactly Panicking entails, before the push roll is made. Panic should always be an undesirable outcome.

Thank you for reading!

1. Camping and Camp Actions will be the subject of tomorrow's post!↩

2. Diseases and Infection will be the subject of a future post, but you can check out these wonderful tables by Logan Knight in the meantime.↩

3. Intiative is not rolled for - it goes to the side with most units. Players always win on a tie. An interesting corollary about the Fear mechanic is that a solitary monster always loses intiative to a lonesome character, unless that character is afraid.↩

4. [+] is Advantage (roll twice, pick best). [-] is Disadvantage (roll twice, pick worst).↩

#Adventure Calendar Jam 2023 #dungeoncrawling #house rules #procedures #wilderness

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