Death Spiral Option

A Holy Lands RPG Supplement

Pain and Wounds
The Death Spiral is an old-school roleplaying theory that when a character gets hit in combat his abilities will suffer slightly, thereby making him easier to hit the next time, which further degrades his ability to fight even more and so on until they die. In order to increase the realism of the Life Point system in Holy Lands I propose the optional use of the Death Spiral. To start you have a base number of 10 (everyone starts with a base of 10, as an option this can be adjusted by class, giving Knights and Warriros a base of 15) you take your characters Endurance Attribute, plus your level, this will give you a number that you use as a percentage. That percentage is used to determine how many Life Points your character can take before Wounded and what effects those hits have on you. So for example you have a Scout (3rd level), with an Endurance of 7; so you have 10 (base) +7+3 =20%. You have 30 Life Points, so then the wound point is 20% of 30 which is 10 (always round up). So anytime you take any hit that causes 10 or more DAMAGE at one time, you go up one wound level. So using the above example; your character has a wound point of 10, he gets hit for 3 DAM, no effect other than losing Life points. Then the next hit does 10 DAM, this puts him at 13 DAM total, which is over his wound point so now he is at wound level 1 and -1ADV/-1ATT/-1DEF. (the optional stun rule is not being used). Every time your character takes damage in excess of his wound point, he suffers a wound and goes up on the wound level. A record of each wound level should be kept track on the character sheet. According to the number of wounds that a character has sustained, certain penalties apply to the characters performance as seen in the table. These wounds penalties remain in effect until the wounds are healed. At level 6 the character has lost the ability stand without aid, and is crawling at 1/10th his movement rate. Wounds are only temporary and can be recovered just like Life Points, and whenever healing (natural or divine) occurs, it is spread over the characters wounds (reducing Life Points of damage of each wound). When a
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Release 1 Holy Lands RPG Copyright 2011 Faith Quest Games All Rights Reserved

Wounds 1 2 3 4 5 6

ADV -1 -2 -2 -3 -4 -5

ATT -1 -2 -2 -3 -4 -6

DAM -0 -1 -2 -3 -4 -6

DEF -1 -1 -2 -3 -5 -7

Movement normal 2/3 1/2 1/3 1/5 no move

wound points worth of healing has occurred (in the example case 10 LP healed) damage total is reduced below the characters threshold of pain, then that wound level is removed. Stunning Whenever a character receives a wound, the character must make a saving throw vs Death to avoid being stunned, losing all AtR for that round. This saving throw, if failed, means the character cannot attack, cast miracles or take any action except defend for the remainder of the round. To further add to the death spiral effect, a -1 is given to the saving throw for each wound level.
Monsters Monsters and demons are also affected by the Death Spiral. But their wound points are determined a bit differently since they do not have levels per se. Use the following formula to determine the monsters wound points; Lesser Demons/Small Monsters: Base of 10 Greater Demons/Normal Monsters: Base of 15 Advanced Demons/Giant Monsters: Base of 30 So then like the characters you will take the creatures base and that is the percentage that you take of their Life Points to give you their wound points. Example: You have an Imp (lesser demon) with 12 LP. You take his base of 10 and that means that 10% of 12 is 2 (actually 1.2 but we round up always). So Mr. Imp can take two LP of damage before his is at wound level 1. Upping the challenge we have a Dragon (Advanced demon), 300 LP. Take the base of 30, at 30% of 300 = 90 wound points. So as you can see an advanced demon is nothing to sneeze at (unless that it its weakness, then in that case God Bless!).