The Business: A Palladium That Survives Through The 21st Century (Part 3)

(Following from yesterday's post.)

Your man will get injured, get poisoned, fall ill, get afflicted by parasites, and otherwise need medical attention to recover.

You cannot presume that someone will be handy to throw some bullshit magic powers or items on your man to get him back into the fight in a trivial amount of time. Your party could run out of items, run out of power users, run out of power, or otherwise be unable to do the Throw A Cleric At It routine.

Time to put a proper procedure to this entire process.

Getting Hurt

When your man gets hit, he stands a good chance of getting hurt. (Armor would step in here; that will be dealt with in another post.) Roll damage like you're used to. Then make a Saving Throw. The damage rolled is the Target Number. If your man passes, he is still hit and any follow-up attacks (Poisons, Curses, Environmental Damage, Grapple/Martial Arts combos like Flips and Throws, etc.) still apply. Otherwise, the attack is presumed to graze your man- no damage done, but cut and banged up in superficial manners.

If your man fails, then he sustains injury. Subtract the Damage Roll from your failed Saving Throw and divide by five, rounding up (so minimum of one); this is how many times he rolls 1d6 against your man.

If this is the first time your man is injured, the Referee rolls 1d4. This roll determines which of your man's Physical attributes get penalized, representing physical injury to your man's body.

1. Physical Strength
2. Physical Prowess
3. Physical Endurance
4. Speed

The attacker rolls 1d6 X times. Each die is applied result to that attribute in turn until either all dice are resolved or the stat is zeroed. Its effective score is reduced by that total, reducing your man's performance accordingly, until he makes a full recovery. This means that your man can take penalties to his dice rolls, have his Carry Capacity drop, be unable to dodge or run as he would otherwise, etc.

After that first hit, you determine which attribute takes the hit on each successive 1d6 roll. That means that if the attacker gets to roll 6d6, he's actually rolling 1d6 six times; but you determine how to apply them to your man, allowing you to triage incoming hits to stay in the fight as best you man to escape, hold out for aid, or win.

If any stat is reduced to zero, your man drops and is out of the fight. Remaining damage carries over. If two go to zero, he is severely wounded. If three drop to zero, your man is on Death's Door and must make a Coma Check to stay alive; fialure means he is dead on the spot. (Exception: Attacks whose Xd6 equals the combined total of the target's four Physical attributes auto-kill the target and leave nothing behind.)

Recovery is below.

Damage Over Time: You do this procedure per tick of effect. Poisons, Radiation, NBC attacks, and similar causes can inflict this effect upon a man; see specific attack for details.

Illness/Parasites: Treated as a DOT attack, but more focused. See specific entry.

Scaling: If your man takes a hit by an attack of a greater scale than himself, multiple the Target Number by a factor of 10 for each step of difference. (Yes, this means multipling by 1000 for three steps in scale. No, you're not saving against the Death Star; this is one of the reasons I removed "Auto-Save On Natural 20/Auto-Fail On Natural 1".) If he takes a hit from one of a lesser scale, apply the multipler to the Saving Throw instead.

(N.B.: This is for Hero Figures in wargame terms, and not applied to ordinary figures; it's a strict Save Or Die result for them.)

Recovery

Barring supernatural powers or high technology, your man will recover at given rates (measured in Real Time for ease of applying in Downtime).

Unconcious: If just one stat got zeroed, your man wakes up 10 minutes later. The zeroed stat is restored to half its value (round down). This is Minor Wounding. He must engage in total rest under medical supervision for a week to make a full recovery, and for a month without it.

Severe Wounds: Wake up in three hours. Zeroed stats are raised to 1. Must engage in total rest under medical supervision for a month, and for three months without it.

Comatose: Must be extracted to a safe location and put under medical supervision to avoid making Coma Checks every hour, with failure meaning death. If he makes it to a hospital or similar facility, he wakes up with a successful Coma Check. He must make a Saving Throw to avoid being a crippling injury, using his bonuses/penalties from his baseline PE score to influence the roll, against a Target Number of 15. Failure means he's lost one or more limbs, senses, or faculties; the Referee is at his discretion to determine specifics. (Those Full Conversion Cyborgs come from somewhere.)

If he passes, he improves to Severe Wounds in three months under supervision and one year without it. (You do not want to get bitched out that hard. Yes, I am speaking from first-hand experience.)

Lack Of Care: Untreated, or improperly treated, wounds can go septic. Diseases and afflictions can worsen. In both cases, Save vs. Disease for every day without proper attention. Suffer 1d6 per failed check, as if wounded. (Comatose people are taken care of via the Coma Checks, so this is irrelevant.) Yes, this will kill your man; that's the point. Get his ass to a medic, and the medic get his ass to a hospital.

Commentary

This is a mix of AD&D1e, Palladium, and Classic Traveller- and greatly informed by my own injury which cost me a leg and months in phyiscal rehabilitation, as well as other hospital stays sparked by afflicts that could have gone pear-shaped.

I expect that Palladium die-hards will want something more than "I blow my Save and Die", hence the Traveller grafting, and if you didn't notice the Scaling is from both WEG Star Wars and Mekton Zeta because Mega-Damage isn't good enough at doing this job.

In a proper campaign, where Strict 1:1 Timekeeping in force, getting jacked up like this is guaranteed to put your man out of play. If he also needs to replace lost limbs, senses, etc. then that makes things take longer. This is Working As Intended. Getting jacked up is BAD, and you should take the threat seriously. The same applies to getting ill, afflicted by nasties, etc. and unable to access proper medical attention.

Specifying that Players' mans are Hero Figures is not me pulling bullshit out of my ass. It's me calling back to the origin of the Fighting-Man class of Chainmail, as that is just the Hero Figure translated into a playable character class. All other classes are just different Hero Figures in wargame terms. Tradition is maintained.

Armor will be addressed tomorrow, as that interacts with Scaling.

Certain technologies and powers can turn off some of the rules above (e.g. Juicers and Crazies can turn off their pain receptors, negating some or all of the penalties to their Physical stats) while others (Undead, Full Conversion Cyborgs) either are totally immune or suffer them under different cirsumstances (Vampires get dinged for fire, sunlight, silver, wood, and moving water attacks; Full Cyborgs are totally immune as they are treated as mecha.)

And the scaling has to be mentioned here because, with the expansion of the scaling regime, certain memes are about to die (e.g. MD lasers equal IWIN Button vs. normal men).

With most combatants being stuck with Save Or Die, it makes combat go faster overall; only when Hero Figures are involved will it slow down at all- and it puts some threats that should be terrifying back where they belong.