Spells using the Bloodied condition

JonSetanta · Post by **JonSetanta** » Mon Mar 12, 2012 1:34 am

From another discussion here, I figure it's worth a new thread.

The concept of a Bloodied character in 4e is possibly one of the few good parts to come of the game. In fact I estimate it would work nicely with Save or Suck effects, maybe even Save or Dies, in 3e.

The question is... what do the spells do when a target is not Bloodied?

Option 1: A lesser status effect, in addition to a minor amount of damage. The spell switches over to a major status effect that ensures victory such as Sleep, Petrify, or even Death.

Option 2: Standard damage, similar to that of Fireball or Lightning, which we all know to suck as combat options for the most part. ... Unless those spells did something else such as increased damage or impose a save penalty when the target is Bloodied.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Mon Mar 12, 2012 2:16 am

I like to pretend I'm the only person who ever thought of this, so here's a link to my blog where I propose such an idea:

http://community.wizards.com/ogrebattle ... _for_ddn5e

I believe Save or Die's intention is to create the mood of a good horror film/novel, it's about building suspense. Knowing that jewel shoots an adventurer disintegrating death ray builds suspense, makes you real cautious as a mistake can have the party carting your ashes to the nearest temple. But when you randomly drop dead without much control, your adventurer feels more like "teenage girl no.3 who gets murderized by masked killer" than "gritty pulp hero"

It's that line between good horror suspense and cheap shock (although goofy slaughterfests can be fun if that's your intention, as long as everyone knows they're on the same page) which is trick to aim for. That's the main problem with SoD as it is in D&D.

Another issue is, in the hands of the players, the jarring effect of a % chance, even a low one, of instantly ending a conflict on turn one. Another problem is that hit point damage is nowhere in the equation. If a Fighter spent 4 turns chipping away at the evil baron and on turn 5 the wizard's finger of death succeeds, it doesn't matter if he was at 100% or 10% hit points, he just dies. It makes the fighter's damage feel wasted. These issues snowball into the "Fighters have no use" that culminated in 3e.

So!
Here's my shot at keeping the suspenseful mood save or die while integrating it into a holistic D&D party experience:

'Save or Die' effects will do hit point damage to characters above 50% health, but when targeting a bloodied opponent THEN the chance of instant death occurs.

In this set up the Fighter whacking away at the dread lord is actually a requirement to set up for the wizard to deliver a big fight ending spell, cooperation! 'Save or Suck' can have similar effects. Say Sleep, it could be in it's 4e form against perfectly healthy, strong willed opponents but when cast against bloodied, strained foes it takes on the power of its AD&D incarnation.

The angle I look at this is that this gives Bloodied a meaning beyond "50% of your health". What this does is, if the enemy can exploit it, make bloodied the feeling of being down to single digit health, the next hit can drop you and you're desparate to survive. This of course can apply to effects other than magic. Say an Assassin's death attack, or a Fighter disarming his foe. The fight-ending power is kept intact.

Say a Warrior has 40 hit points total. That means he has 20 points of "heroic luck" up and running, while the next 20 are 'violins are rising' danger zone. But enemies that don't have SoD's, say goblin goons, aren't going to be one shotting you, SoD is something in the hands of big bads and the most intense dungeon rooms.

Because hit points n' damage dice are so meta-gamey in the first place, we all have our set expecations of what 1 to 100% means. You could view this just as easily as "the hero has 20 hit points until he's at death's door (vulnerable to a death attack), but he has 20 extra to less severe wounds". Or if it was worded "You have 20 hit points, but you can fight until you're at -21, but when you're in the negatives a SoD can drop you immediately", functionally it's the same thing, '40 points of fighting, 20 points of vulnerability' but the wording changes your perception. That's what I mean by expecations, so I ask of you to perhaps adjust your current expectations to see how this rule would set hit point numbers to mean something a little different, yet still expressing the same basic idea.

The heroic stand of the warrior, hewing through goblin minions (gameplay: he's been dropped to bloodied but the gobbos don't gain much of a bonus for that). The Death Knight strides towards the warrior, their blades cross and he cuts down the hero in a single blow with his soul crushing blade (save or die).

That's the kind of imagery that I had in mind when making this mechanic. The tense moment, like taking a step into a dark room, the tense moment of your vision adjusting to the darkness (do you really want to see what's in there?) is what I want players to feel.

*an addendum: On keeping minion type monsters, it could be that foes that are under your level by X amount just count as 'bloodied' for the purpose of your various abilities. So the Wizard can still put those goblin sentries to sleep with a wave of his hand and the Fighter can crush them in swaths, but they won't be one-shotting their hobgoblin boss so easily.

*On the concern that front line warriors may be unfairly hosed for this new lethality added to Bloodied:
Warrior types who have the durability to shield others already have higher hit points/AC to begin with, they have more 'heroic plot points' to whittle through compared to anyone else.
There's also other elements to be fleshed out that exist with such a mechanic. Everything following is just quick thoughts, yet to be fully fleshed out:

Say, if going full defense, even when bloodied, makes you count as a 'non bloodied' state. This is like a reverse way of doing "target is dazed/stunned", but it's based on player choice to take that penalty and the reward is survivability. Or if a second wind mechanic is kept in place, then the warrior spends a round to recover his senses as he reels from the mighty villain's assault, This is effectively another "target is dazed" type effect, and it's player choice (and not a terrible choice either) to trade that potential attack action for survivability, so it's the monster taking away player action with an attack without feeling like the player is not participating for a turn as it is his choice to recover instead of risking death to strike at the villain.
And in that case, if they Do die, it was player choice that did it.

You also have Party tension, the warrior is pressed into a bad situation, how can the other party members bail him out? The cleric most obviously heals. Perhaps the wizard would try to set up a barrier to halt the potentially fatal attack. The thief could have some kind of interrupting/distracting maneuver to avert the medusa's gaze, giving Fighter time to recover.

It's about feel and pacing and other things where I don't actually mention math and solid mechanics.

I'd go with it being a minor stat hindrance. Or to look at it another way, "Suck after bloodied" isn't so much a way to pad SoD as it is to give debuffing a finishing blow.

Glitterdust: lose concealment, -2 to hit-> +blinded
colorspray: daze -> stunned
Sleep: slow, weaken -> +daze-> KO
finger of death: weaken, slow -> reduce to 0 HP

disarm: penalize target's attack -> knock weapon out of their grip

Oh, I also have another proposal to bloodied: "Maximize weapon damage taken". A fighter with a greataxe will be doing 12+modifier per swing, a 2d6 sneak attack with a 1d4 knife does 16+mod damage.
Maybe this could apply to magic damage taken too, so 6d6 fireball is "deal 36 to bloodied doods" but that depends on hit points per level and other math stuff I haven't banged out. Or it could just be left a "fighter gets nice things" thing.

For things like Charm Person, there's the "fail 3 saves" system, or the condition tracker. Could be a skillchallenge such as "You have 3 s.challenge rounds to social-fu the target to determine if you get what you want out of it"

ishy · Post by **ishy** » Mon Mar 12, 2012 2:17 am

If you include spells like fireball and lightning bolt I'd assume they wouldn't actually suck if you were talking about a new edition that is.

But even then, I wouldn't want SoDs to be fireball till targets reach health number x.

I'd prefer something like, SoD spell lasts x rounds if you ever become bloodied now you have to save or die.

JonSetanta · Post by **JonSetanta** » Mon Mar 12, 2012 5:07 pm

OgreBattle wrote:I like to pretend I'm the only person who ever thought of this, so here's a link to my blog where I propose such an idea:

4e designers thought of it first. I was just porting it over to 3e, but it's good to know you went further than I did on it.

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Mon Mar 12, 2012 5:18 pm

sigma999 wrote:The concept of a Bloodied character in 4e is possibly one of the few good parts to come of the game.

no its not, but i will play along....

The question is... what do the spells do when a target is not Bloodied?

what does a fireball do when cast underwater?
what does a wall of ice do when cast underwater?

it would really depend on the spell as to what it would do, and if the bloodied target had something to overcome the effect of the spell form being bloodied.

maybe a sleep spell effect wouldnt work on a bloodied opponent that is raging due to being bloodied?

i ould think each spell, that isnt direct and only damage, would be affect differently and have to be looked at what effect they COULD offer against a bloodied opponent, rather than a general "makes spell better against bloodied" kind of thing.

JonSetanta · Post by **JonSetanta** » Mon Mar 12, 2012 6:26 pm

Here we go.

Firstly, to answer OgreBattle's option of treating lesser targets as Bloodied even when they're not, the condition should be "Enemies with HP equal to or less than your level are treated as Bloodied against your attacks"

Secondly, this is what I have in mind so far.

Shocking Grasp
SL 1
Normal: 1d6 + INT bonus + 2 per level Electric damage
Target Bloodied: Deal double damage.

Fireball
SL 3
Normal: 1d6 + INT bonus + 4 per level Fire damage (using the slot level as a good indicator for how much damage per level a spell should deal)
Target Bloodied: Deal double damage.

Flesh to Stone
SL6
Normal: 1d12 + INT bonus + 7 per level Earth damage (creatures with the Earth subtype are immune to Earth damage)
Target Bloodied: Target also takes 2d6 DEX damage. A target with 0 DEX hit by this spell is Petrified.

Finger of Death
SL 7
Normal: 3d4 + INT bonus + 8 per level Negative energy damage
Target Bloodied: Target also takes 2d6 CON damage.

EDIT:
The rate of spell damage I'm using is as follows:

Spell Slot Level + 1 = damage per level

Optional (from Pathfinder): To balance out all these fun things for spellcasters there could be one more factor to reward people that do nothing but deal damage; Bleed.
"Bleed" is a condition that reads as...

A creature that is taking bleed damage takes the listed amount of damage at the beginning of its turn. Bleeding can be stopped by a DC 15 Heal check or through the application of any spell that cures hit point damage (even if the bleed is ability damage). Some bleed effects cause ability damage or even ability drain. Bleed effects do not stack with each other unless they deal different kinds of damage. When two or more bleed effects deal the same kind of damage, take the worse effect. In this case, ability drain is worse than ability damage.

I would treat that as "just HP damage" universally.
It can be stopped, but mid-battle it will usually lead to bringing a target closer to death.
It would begin at the end of the same round as when a character becomes Bloodied in an encounter (or per hour), which means if they are healed and brought back to Bloodied they are not going to rebleed.
The base Bleed amount will be 1 HP, which is enough for realism at low levels but negligible at high levels. Critical hits could also cause Bleed and stack once a character is brought to Bloodied, but that might make things too complex.

So, if a damage dealer manages to bring an enemy down to half HP and keep them there, preventing them from stopping to heal or at least making them waste actions to stop it, this at least slightly rewards those that don't rely on special Bloodied effects.

John Magnum · Post by **John Magnum** » Mon Mar 12, 2012 6:41 pm

Why do you even have a Fireball doing 1d6 damage if it's doing anywhere from 3 to 6 damage per level? 1d6 + 24 is a sad joke of a damage expression.

JonSetanta · Post by **JonSetanta** » Mon Mar 12, 2012 7:35 pm

John Magnum wrote:Why do you even have a Fireball doing 1d6 damage if it's doing anywhere from 3 to 6 damage per level? 1d6 + 24 is a sad joke of a damage expression.

Would you rather have 1d6 and + 6 per level, then how much more should be added when used against a Bloodied target? +4? +6?

1d6 + 30 for a level 5 Wizard seems a bit much, that's roughly half a Barbarian 5's HP. It would kill a rival Wizard on a failed save.
1d6 + 60 would outright slay almost anything not resistant to Fire of that same level (5) in one blow.

I'm not asking this out of confrontation, but rather that I really don't know how much damage is appropriate. It's been discussed many times in the Den but never finalized other than "Evocation sucks" and left at that.

John Magnum · Post by **John Magnum** » Mon Mar 12, 2012 7:40 pm

The point isn't that it's too much or too little damage, the point is that the 1d6 is a joke because nobody cares when you're getting +24 static.

JonSetanta · Post by **JonSetanta** » Mon Mar 12, 2012 7:43 pm

I add the 1d6 in so that players have something to roll. It randomizes the total, but not so much that you're shaking a fistful of d6s as with the vanilla Fireball.

Also, I altered the damage totals after your post to better scale with the rate at which characters ideally gain CON boosts.

Disintegrate
SL 6
Normal: 2d6 + INT bonus + 7 per level untyped damage
Target Bloodied: Deal double damage. A target brought to 0 HP or less is turned to dust, with or without their equipment and clothing.

Foxwarrior · Post by **Foxwarrior** » Mon Mar 12, 2012 8:08 pm

Rolling fistfuls of dice is fun, sigma999.

John Magnum · Post by **John Magnum** » Mon Mar 12, 2012 8:15 pm

2d6 + 77 is again just... Kind of pathetic. The difference between 79 and 89 HP damage is not really exciting.

Leress · Post by **Leress** » Mon Mar 12, 2012 8:21 pm

sigma999 wrote:I add the 1d6 in so that players have something to roll. It randomizes the total, but not so much that you're shaking a fistful of d6s as with the vanilla Fireball.

First, that is a bad reason to add a dice roll. Second if you are going to put a die roll in make it so it means something, it shouldn't be the variance die that is what console RPGs do.

JonSetanta · Post by **JonSetanta** » Mon Mar 12, 2012 9:47 pm

Then I'll ask you guys, how much dice do you want to roll each time you cast a spell?

Stubbazubba · Post by **Stubbazubba** » Mon Mar 12, 2012 10:00 pm

It's more like a percentage of your total damage should be up to the dice. For instance, in the 2d6 + 77 example, your average is 84 damage. You could, instead, roll 12d6 + 42, which would give you the same average, but open up the range to 54-114. That's 50% of your average damage being up to the dice. That's many times more exciting than 1d6+77, because the dice actually matter. If your dice are contributing less than, say, 1/4 of your average damage, I'd say rolling the dice is becoming lame.

JonSetanta · Post by **JonSetanta** » Tue Mar 13, 2012 12:44 am

I don't prefer that much variance. Spending a spell slot should not result in only 50% output of damage.

If you really want a fistful of dice, it would look like this;

Fireball
SL 3
Normal: (1d6 +1) per level Fire damage
Target Bloodied: Deal double damage ((2d6 + 2) per level, which is goddamn too many dice).

Stubbazubba · Post by **Stubbazubba** » Tue Mar 13, 2012 2:44 am

To each his own. I also agree that rolling 12 dice for a range of 54-114 is too much, but I just don't like dealing with triple-digit damage numbers more than I have an issue with rolling modest fistfuls of dice.

...You Lost Me · Post by **...You Lost Me** » Tue Mar 13, 2012 3:47 am

I think dice should cap at 6d6, and if a player is hitting a bloodied target, let them roll 10-12 tops. When I play, I'm actually OK when I get a crit or something and I get to roll huge numbers of dice. Just doing it all the time is obnoxious.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Tue Mar 13, 2012 4:52 am

Having generic damaging attacks do twice as much damage when opponents are bloodied is exactly like just giving everyone 3/4 as many hit points. The entire point of doing all this is that you don't have fireballs do anything special for bloodied targets.

You have some "finishing moves" that do big effects to bloodied enemies and small effects to non-bloodied enemies. And then you have normal attacks like Fireball that are just normal attacks.

-Username17

Neurosis · Post by **Neurosis** » Tue Mar 13, 2012 6:10 pm

I thought about it a lot and I *really* like this mechanic.

Agree with Frank although shocking grasp should probably use some extra oomph compared to fireball--maybe have it stun or daze bloodied enemies? Anyway/Also: Finger of Death and Flesh to Stone should remain SoD for Bloodied enemies, no need to give them the additional nerf of making them just do 2-12 points of Dex/Con damage to bloodied foes.

JonSetanta · Post by **JonSetanta** » Tue Mar 13, 2012 6:32 pm

Schwarzkopf wrote:Finger of Death and Flesh to Stone should remain SoD for Bloodied enemies, no need to give them the additional nerf of making them just do 2-12 points of Dex/Con damage to bloodied foes.

I was aiming for somewhere between 3e and Pathfinder, where the latter converted it to straight out damage. The end result is still the same; a target on their way to becoming stone is slowly as they calcify and eventually become immoble, while a target on their way to death is half dead but not quite.

Personally I don't want to see instant kill effects. It's just not fair.

And no, splitting normal Fireball and Super Fireball That's Good Against Bloodied is not a good idea.

Foxwarrior · Post by **Foxwarrior** » Tue Mar 13, 2012 7:07 pm

If you make Fireball deal double damage to bloodied targets, you get the same problem as with the current D&D rules, where a person casting SoDs and a person dealing damage are completely failing to synergize with each other; albeit now only once the targets are bloodied.

If you make Fireball deal only normal damage to bloodied targets, it's obviously stupid to cast Fireballs on bloodied targets, since so many options are suddenly improved.

I prefer the latter choice, because obvious trap options ruin the game less than subtle trap options do.

Also, I thought the whole point of this bloodied mechanic (a significantly less granular version of a mechanic I made, not to toot my own horn or anything) was to make SoDs into a fair option.

Neurosis · Post by **Neurosis** » Tue Mar 13, 2012 11:18 pm

sigma999 wrote:Personally I don't want to see instant kill effects. It's just not fair.

But is a spell that makes you die if a) you're already bloodied and b) you fail a save really that "instant kill"? I submit that it is not.

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Tue Mar 13, 2012 11:51 pm

sigma999 wrote:Personally I don't want to see instant kill effects. It's just not fair.

then dont use or allow them, as other people might just actual want them.

there are some things like turning to stone that shouldnt be bound by bloodied.

JonSetanta · Post by **JonSetanta** » Thu Mar 15, 2012 12:52 am

Just winging this out there as a thought experiment.

Sleep
SL 1
Normal: 1d6 Mental damage per odd level
Target Bloodied: Target falls asleep on a failed Will save, but gets a new save at the end of every later round to wake up.

Color Spray
SL 1
Normal: 1d4 Light damage per odd level (deals double damage to fungus and beings harmed by sunlight such as Vampires), Target is Dazed for 1 round on a failed Will save.
Target Bloodied: Target is Stunned and Blinded for 1 round on a a failed Will save.

Shocking Grasp v2
SL 1
Normal: 1d6 Electric damage per level, with +2 per level damage if the target is wearing at least Medium armor made of steel.
Target Bloodied: Target is Stunned for 1 round on a failed Will save.

The Gaming Den

Spells using the Bloodied condition

Spells using the Bloodied condition

Re: Spells using the Bloodied condition