In the comments on yesterday’s post, I linked to my house rules for death and dying and my thoughts on save-or-die effects. One of the major thoughts in those posts was the fact that I’ve replaced death effects with Constitution damage in my campaign, and my hypothesis that non-deadly save-or-die effects could similarly be replaced with ability score damage. (For example, a petrification effect could inflict Dexterity damage. A flesh to stone spell would only turn you to stone if it reduced your Dexterity to 0. If your Dexterity wasn’t reduced to 0, then you can still feel your reflexes slowing down as your flesh stiffens and hardens.)
Using Constitution damage for death effects has worked really well: Death effects remain fearsome without bypassing ablative mechanics entirely, and the hefty hit point loss coupled to Constitution damage means that they have a meaningful impact even if death isn’t achieved.
Replacing other save-or-die effects with comparable ability damage, however, has run up against the fact that ability score damage can be a real headache in 3rd Edition. Dexterity damage, for example, means recalculating Armor Class, attack bonuses, and skill bonuses on-the-fly in the middle of combat. A certain degree of system mastery will allow you to simply note the penalty and then apply it to everything that you remember is based on Dexterity, but once you start tossing around multiple types of ability score damage it can turn into a real nightmare.
Recently, however, I’ve realized that the solution may have been staring me in the face. There’s another type of damage which would normally require massive recalculation of multiple scores and abilities: Energy drain. The designers of 3rd Edition, however, recognized what a pain-in-the-ass energy drain could be in previous editions and supplied a simple method for handling it in the middle of encounters: Negative levels.
Thus, in 3rd Edition, when you suffer a negative level you simply:
- -1 on all skill checks, ability checks, attack rolls, and saving throws
- -5 hit points
- -1 effective level (for level checks, etc.)
- Lose 1 spell from highest-level of currently available spells.
Can a similar solution work for ability score damage? I think so.
SUPER SIMPLE ABILITY SCORE DAMAGE
For every two points of ability damage you suffer during an encounter (regardless of which ability), you suffer a -1 penalty on all skill checks, ability checks, attack rolls, and saving throws.
Constitution Loss: Constitution damage also subtracts -1 hit point per HD for every 2 points of Constitution damage suffered.
Spellcasting: Spellcasters who have their spellcasting attribute targeted must adjust the save DCs of their spells due to damage suffered.
When the encounter ends, re-calculate the actual penalties of any damage which remains.
(The rules for healing drain/damage remain the same. Similarly, the rules for what happens when an ability score is reduced to 0 remain the same.)
I’m going to suggest the ‘SSASD’ house rule to my group. It’s clean, simple, and you don’t have to do a lot of heavy lifting in the middle of combat.
Super simple ability damage and condition tracking in one, for D&D.
Replace (n)d6 stat damage with (n) steps of stacking -2 to everything with a save to avoid/reduce. That’s the only numeric effect, other than the following.
Str: encumbrance +1 category. 4 steps = collapsed.
Dex: lose an action. 4 steps = no actions left.
Con: -1 hp/HD, half hp, 1 hp/HD maximum. 4 steps = dead.
Mental: -1 spell/level, half spells, 1 spell/level max. 4 steps = KO’d.
Tie confusion to Int, charm/dominate to Wis, and the fear chain to Cha, with the 3rd step being the worst type, and 4th being disabling/killing.
Philter of love? 3-step Wis damage. Eww, but at least the party Fighter is at -6 when he’s attacking his friends.
From the player’s perspective, the SSAD rules are a lot harsher: -1 to ALL saves instead of one save, -1 to ALL skills instead of 10-30% of them. Despite the caveats for CON and Spellcasting Stat damage, the result is also so close to the negative level mechanic that it seems to make the differences between different kinds of Stat drains largely irrelevant (with the exception of CON.) For which you would then better be served with basically CON drain and ‘Generic’ Ability Drain.
The approach also feels a little disassociated. If you’re beseiged by creatures that drain your Strength, why does your perception and diplomacy also get worse? Obviously, this could simply be accepted as the price for streamlined mechanics.
I don’t really like this one. As Sebastien said, seems harsh. Petrification as dex damage doesn’t really work if your AC doesn’t decrease either.
As an aside, resistance to ability damage is one of the few cases where odd ability scores help with the normal rules.
@Sebastien: The way I picture is that your body and/or mind has been seriously thrown out of whack. Until you have a chance to reorient yourself, you’re going to just generally be out of sorts.
It’s an abstraction, of course. And as with any abstraction, you lose detail. That’s not the same as dissociated, however.
I don’t really like the idea, but then I’ve developed an excel sheet we all use to track niggling things like weight, carry capacity, skill totals, AC, etc so it’s pretty easy to just reduce your current attribute and look at how your stats have changed.
This is how Pathfinder does it. Further, Pathfinder 2E managed to simplify it even further by replacing ability score damage with conditions that represent suffering the ability damage (Clumsy 1, Clumsy 2, Enfeebled 1..), but then didn’t actually leverage it as a way to improve Save or Die effects for the most part.
A petrification effect might cause you to be Slowed 1 if you pass the save, Slowed 2 if you fail, Petrified if you critically fail, but they don’t stack/accumulate. Could be better, as you said, with the condition increasing by X every turn and at 5 or something you’re out.