Ability damage

[Blackwarder]

Hello!

So after hearing about the great PF modules repeatedly I decided to bite the bullet and buy one to see what all the fuss is about, I bought Crypt of the Everflame and even though I never played PF but one thing that I really liked was when the characters had to climb down a cliff and each one had to succeed in 3 acrobatic to successfully reach the bottom in one piece, one of the possible penalties for missing the roll was 1d4 dexterity points of damage because of a severely sprained ankle.

Now, considering that 5e is going to be more tied to the characters ability scores wouldn't adding ability damage be an interesting idea? So that pit trap at the entrance of the dungeon don't only do some easily healed points of damage but also do 1d2 points of strength damage due to hurt back or a crit from a troll will cause some con damage because you cracked your ribs.

It's just a raw idea but what do you think?

Warder

 

[groklynn]

Check out AD&D. There was ALOT of ability damages those days especially undead attacks

 

[Shroomy]

If ability damage is brought back I would want two changes implemented: first, no ability damage is permanent (aka deep six 3e-style ability drain) and second it shouldn't force major and laborious recalculation of your other game statistics.

 

[Savage Wombat]

Well, reclassing level drain as "negative levels" which had a fixed penalty attached seemed to work. How about something like that?

 

[Blackwarder]

If ability damage is brought back I would want two changes implemented: first, no ability damage is permanent (aka deep six 3e-style ability drain) and second it shouldn't force major and laborious recalculation of your other game statistics.

Agreed on both counts, I don't know how PF deal with run of the mill ability damage but unless it's an extremely powerfull foe abil damage shouldn't be permanent.

And as for recalculating statistics, I think that it will be sufficed to add a small note next to each ability if there is some sort of damage. After all if they do indeed make abilities the corner stone of the game than we wouldn't need to change tones of different stuff, only the current ability.

Warder

 

[frankthedm]

No. There is already a system for tracking how damaged a character is. It is called hit points. Penalties for being weakened, numbed or what have you are fine, but screwing with the math on the sheet is just a pain.

Ability damage is one of the largest math headaches of d20 and I hope to never see it again. Fighting monsters that do stat damage was like fighting with hit points that didn't increase with level. Whack-a-stat is one of the worst inventions of 3E. Direct Attibute damage was one of the ways heroes were little better off than commoners and encouraged cheese ball spells aimed at ability scores. A huge monster has a crappy dex to represent plodding movement, not so it can be oneshot-able by an empowered Sum-Dumass’s Dagger of Dexterity Damage.

 

[Ahnehnois]

In principle, I think it would be great.

In practice, these things tend to be way too mathematically intensive.

 

[jonesy]

Ability damage is one of the largest math headaches of d20 and I hope to never see it again. Fighting monsters that do stat damage was like fighting with hit points that didn't increase with level. Whack-a-stat is one of the worst inventions of 3E.

It didn't come from 3E. I think it might have come from 1E Ravenloft (I6?). But it was most prevalent in 3E.

 

[Blackwarder]

I honestly don't see why ability damage will be such a headache to deal with, as long as they remain uncommon and as long as abilities act as some sort of passive defense or passive automatic success or failure for skills the amount of recalculating should be small.

the problem with 3e was that a lot of the math was connected yet removed from the abilities, so every small change required recalculating stuff, but if it isn't removed than the math impact should be minimal.

Warder

 

[tlantl]

I like the idea of easily healed ability damage simulating strains, sprains, concussions, and other forms of physical or mental damage.

This would be different from ability drain which is permanent ability decrease.

The damage should only be 1-2 points to keep the work manageable when a condition causes a recalculation of stats.