Rough Drafts: Less Lethal Combat

 One obstacle I’m finding with faction-play is that conflicts in RPGs have a nasty tendency to have resolutions that are, to put it euphemistically, final. The default way to resolve a conflict in a game like D&D is to have a fight, and the default resolution of a fight is that one side is completely dead (usually the NPCs). At best, you’ve killed the vast majority of the NPCs, and a few ran away with their lives. It makes repeated dealings with the same NPCs difficult to pull off, and makes good relations with factions a bit all-or-nothing.

Here’s my take on a Wounds system that takes a little bit of that pressure off. It’s made to be graftable onto most systems that use HP, although it’s probably going to work better on ones with relatively quick combat and low HP totals. If I was going to use this system in something like 5e I might try out halving everyone’s HP totals and tweaking some of the numbers here.

Also, I wouldn’t use this in a campaign with a lot of throwaway fights. If those goblins only exist as a road bump on the path to treasure, nobody really cares whether they get defeated with nothing more than a bump on the head, lose a hand, or die. It works best in situations where your opponents are people using force to try to block you from your goals, but where neither side really wants the other dead or is willing to die for their cause. Think territorial goblins trying to make you leave their lands, bandits shaking you down on the highway, city guards who caught you trying to sneak in, or wild beasts looking for an easy meal.

Credits to Into the Odd and Dogs in the Vineyard as primary sources of inspiration.

Less Lethal Combat System

Quick Summary: Whenever an attack brings you to 0hp or less, gain 1+ Wounds and then try to roll over your number of Wounds on a die. If you pass, you shrug the blow off, but if you fail you keep making the same roll again until you pass. The more times you fail, the worse your injury is.

HP: HP is treated more like your stamina/defense and less like health--it’s assumed that attacks against you that don’t reduce you to 0hp don’t actually land in a meaningful way; you parry them, dodge them, they lack the force to penetrate your armor, etc. Hitting 0hp means you’re defenseless--you no longer have the stamina to dodge, parry, etc. Enemies with weak motivations will try to run away once they hit 0hp.

Wounds: Whenever you take damage and are left at 0hp, you gain 1 Wound. Additionally, for each 5hp of damage taken past what was needed to bring you to 0hp you take an additional Wound. You then roll for harm.

Roll for Harm: Try to roll over your number of Wounds on a die. The side of the die depends on how deadly the attack was (see Deadly Attacks table). If you fail, roll again until you succeed. The more failures you get before succeeding, the worse the consequences of the attack are (see Harm Table). Note that some attacks might have alternate harm tables.

Pulled Punches: An attacker can choose to make their attack one less step deadly (increase the Check for Harm die size by one step). This is the norm in most battles that aren’t life or death--if the goal of the NPCs is ‘drive the PCs away’, ‘capture the PCs’, or ‘rough up these strangers who came into my favorite bar and then insulted me’, they typically pull their punches. It’s a good idea to remind your PCs of this at the start of your first few fights using this system.

Healing: A good night’s rest (the type that’s hard to get while camping) will heal 1 Wound. This subsystem probably works best in situations where HP is fairly easy to regain outside of combat but hard to regain in combat.

Deadly Attacks Table
Die Size	Type of Attack
1d8	Non-lethal weapons. Punches. Most improvised weapons (pool cues, large sticks, cast iron pans, etc)
1d6	Most weapons. Swords, spears, maces, etc.
1d4	Especially deadly attacks. Axes, lightning bolts, dragon’s breath, etc.
1d4-1	A cursed sword that rots the flesh it cuts. Hellfire. A chainsaw?

Harm Table
# of Failures	Result
Passed First Time	No effect! You shrug off the attack.
1 Fail	Injured! Roll on the Injury table and gain the corresponding condition. Enemies who aren’t making a desperate last stand will run away at this point.
2 Fails	Knocked Out! You’re unconscious for the duration of the fight. When you wake up roll 1d8--if the result is equal to your Wounds or lower roll on the Injury table.
3 Fails	Dying! You’re unconscious. When you receive medical attention roll 1d8--if the result is equal to your Wounds or lower you have died. If the medical attention is within a round of the attack or if it comes from someone with medical training you can roll twice and pick the better. If it’s both within a round and from someone with medical training, or if you receive magical healing you pass automatically. If an hour passes without medical attention roll twice and pick the worse--if you still pass you wake up. If you aren’t dead, roll another 1d8. If the result is equal to your wounds or lower roll on the Injury table.
4+ Fails	Instant Death! You die dramatically--your head cut off, your heart run through, your body torn apart.

Injury Table
1d10	Body Part/ Symptom	Base Effects
1	Leg	Movement speed drops to 5’/round
2	Arm	Disadvantage on all attacks or relevant skill checks
3	Head	Dazed. Can only take one action/round (ie-move OR attack)
4	Chest	Treat your Wounds as 2 higher for all checks.
5	Trouble Breathing	Can’t go above 0hp
6	Eyes	Blinded. Your system probably has a way of handling this
7	Bleeding	Gain 1 Wound (and roll Harm Table) each round until someone takes an action to bandage you. 2-in-6 chance of bleeding resuming each time you exert yourself or get jostled.
8	Scared	Make a save or run away/refuse to act whenever put in danger
9	Angry	Make a save or attack berserkly whenever provoked/take damage
10	Confused	Whenever you have to choose a target (who to attack, what direction to go, which chalice to take, etc) make a save or pick randomly without realizing it. If attacking, pick target normally and on a fail you target a random person within reach (if melee) or within 10’ of target (if ranged).

Injury Duration Table
Works just like the Harm Table--roll 1d8 and try to beat your Wounds total. Reroll until you pass and count failures. Rolled when you take a 10 minute rest (don't slow down combat by doing it right away).
# of Failures	Result
Passed First Time	Painful, but no real damage. Symptoms end after a 10 minute rest.
1 Fail	Bruised. Heals with a night’s rest.
2 Fails	Sprained. Heals with a week’s rest.
3 Fails	Broken. Heals with 2d4 weeks’ rest.
4+ Fails	Permanent. Will not heal without magical assistance.

Other Rules

• If you roll max value when Rolling for Harm but still fail, reroll but with two dice instead of one. If you do so, get max value on all dice again, and still don’t roll high enough reroll with three, and so on.

• If the type of injury an attack would inflict is obvious, just go with that instead of rolling. Some attacks probably inflict injuries not even on the list--maybe a bolt of pure chaos causes mutations instead of injuries.

• Maybe a centipede’s bite causes nausea on one fail, debilitating vomiting on two fails, and choking on one’s vomit at three fails, and cardiac arrest on four fails. Modify things as desired.

• While NPCs generally pull their punches by default, this stops being the case very quickly if the PCs don’t do it, too. If the PCs escalate beyond what the situation calls for roll (even unintentionally) morale for their opponents. On a failure they run away/surrender. On a pass they get mad and start fighting seriously. Decapitating someone during a bar fight either ends the bar fight instantly or makes all hell break loose.

• Characters at 0hp are vulnerable to improvisational fuckery. PCs can declare that they’re doing something before they make their attack, and if the attack lands it does no damage but the fuckery succeeds. This could be kicking them off a cliff, putting them in a headlock, disarming them, putting a blade to their throat, etc.

• NPCs can also do this. An ogre might grab a 0hp player and hold them hostage. A wyvern might grab a 0hp player and try to fly off with them. A goblin might push a 0hp player in front of a mine cart to cover their retreat (forcing an ally to rescue them rather than chase down the goblin). A huge frog might swallow a 0hp player whole (gain 1 Wound per turn in stomach until rescued). PCs being at 0hp is the GM’s license to get creative in ways that might feel unfair at other times.

• Most poisons don’t have any immediate effect, but if you get hit with one at 0hp then you gain (potentially multiple) Wounds after the fight ends and must make a Check for Harm. They’re more for making sure your target dies than for winning fights.

• There are lots of different types of poisons, though. Some work instantly, or after 1d4 rounds, or inflict status effects rather than wounds.

Additional Notes

• This is my first draft! I’ll come back and write more about this once it’s gotten some playtesting in.

• It’s not super explicit in the rules, but a huge part of this system is the idea of ‘how much are you willing to risk for your convictions?’. Most enemies will run away or surrender long before they’re actually killed.

• Enemies without any real conviction will be ‘defeated’ as soon as they hit 0hp. These might be bandits looking for easy money, goblins who don’t like humans showing up in their territory, bullies looking to show some out-of-towners who’s boss, or a tiger looking for prey.

• Enemies with something to fight for will generally be ‘defeated’ once injured. These might be goblins defending their lair, criminals fighting over territory, soldiers/guards on the job, or a tiger on the edge of starvation.

• Enemies who are cornered or are making a desperate last stand will only be ‘defeated’ once rendered unconscious. These might be parents trying to buy their children time to escape, brainwashed cultists who have been whipped into a frenzy, or cornered goblins who know the PCs will just kill them anyway if they surrender.

• ‘Defeated’ enemies will by default retreat to a safe distance and shout encouragement at those still fighting, although obviously different types of enemies will probably act differently depending on the situation.

• Try not to corner players. Make it possible for them to run or surrender without it just being a TPK every time. The goal is that this system should make it relatively hard to die by surprise, but easy to die if you keep fighting past your limits.

• Another goal of this system is to flip the players goals from killing their enemies and towards defeating their enemies without killing them.

• Maybe you have to trespass on gnoll territory to reach the Water Shrine. If you can drive them off without killing any of them they’ll probably forget about you as soon as you leave. If you fireball them into charred corpses you’ve got enemies for life, and you can forget about asking them for help when the Goblin King’s armies come knocking at your door.

• If you slit the throats of a bunch of guards when you break out of prison to prove your innocence you might be able to prove that you were framed, but you’re still going to be stuck as outlaws for all that murder you did.

• Part of the fun of this is that things can go wrong on a moment’s notice. With bad enough rolling, a single punch can make a character fall badly and fatally break their skull. Let shit go off the rails when these things happen. The dice are just taking your adventure in an unexpected new direction.

• Don’t slow down the game with a bunch of rolling on the injury table/etc for NPCs if they’re not going to try to keep fighting through it. If these are NPCs you’re going to have repeated relationships with then you can just roll a die or two after the fight to get a sense of how many of those goblins should show up to next week’s diplomatic meeting wearing eyepatches or holding crutches (or not showing up at all).

• This system probably wants a custom morale system to pair with it--it already touches on morale in some places, and so weaving it into a bigger picture would probably help. This has already gotten pretty huge, though, so maybe not today.

• I’m pretty sure my next RPG project is going to be a game about adventurer-diplomat-naturalists.