Alternate versions of Wounding Weapons:

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Tue Dec 27, 2011 3:19 am

The PCs in my game my soon be tangling with a pain-and-make enemies suffer themed antagonist who was going to have a Wounding weapon for flavor, but then I ran into mechanical problems.

Well the SRD version of Wounding is nerfsensical, a +2 bonus for 1 whole point of Con damage that you cannot crit-cheese and a bunch of critters get immunity to just to add complexity atop of tracking odd numbers of Con. With Tome Monk in the game, this is crazy overcosted.

Then the Book Fragment of Gears version of wounding makes a weapon deal Vile damage. That's cool and all, but requires you to be using BoVD material, or at least some of the clerical alignment spells, which is really problematic in my current no-alignment, white-mages-replace divine casters casters game where nothing is raw evil enough to count as "vile" and hallow and consecrate are not available to any PC class.

So here're a couple brainstormed alternatives:

A weapon of Wounding causes intensely painful wounds. A victim who fails a Willpower save suffers 1d6 points of nonlethal damage each round until they receive First Aid or magical healing which restores hit points.
A weapon of Wounding the new and better name for a Weapon of Poison - now causing fewer arguments over poison immunity abilities. Victim makes a Fort save or takes 1d6 Con
A wounding weapon can be used to make attacks which destroy the vitality of enemies. A weapon of Wounding may be used as a standard action to make an attack which deals 2d4 Con damage.
A weapon of Wounding causes bleeding wounds. A victim who fails a Fortitude save suffers 1d6 points of damage (of the same type(s) dealt by the injury each round until they receive First Aid or magical healing which restores hit points.
A weapon of Wounding causes festering wounds which make healing and recovery difficult. A victim of a Wounding weapon who fails a will save is Cursed so that they cannot benefit from spells with the [Healing] descriptor. The wounding effect is the equivalent of an effect generated by a Bestow Curse cast at the weapon wielder's level, and may be negated by Break Enchantment, Remove Curse and similar effects.

Any thoughts on which I should go with?

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Tue Dec 27, 2011 4:13 am

I'm partial the the last one. A Wounding Weapon dealing out cursed wounds? That's pretty (un)righteous.

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Tue Dec 27, 2011 6:31 am

That one actually probably has the best interaction with your White Mage as the party healer. Unless the White Mage took Remove Curse via one of their Advanced Learning picks, they cannot actually fix it until they get Break Enchantment as a 5th level spell. However, in the meantime, they *can* still workaround the curse via Magic Hands being (Su) - however they don't get all their spiffy Brilliance adds on healing spells and have to stay next to the poor cursed sap.

Miryafa · Post by **Miryafa** » Tue Dec 27, 2011 9:52 pm

I like all of them and think it would be really cool if each enemy the party faced (of that antagonist's team) had one of those types of wounding.

Dominicius · Post by **Dominicius** » Wed Dec 28, 2011 8:25 pm

D&D isn't supposed to work without alignments. It always makes me facepalm when I hear people proudly proclaim that they "removed" alignments in their games without actually having thought about the consequences.

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Wed Dec 28, 2011 9:05 pm

Dominicius wrote:D&D isn't supposed to work without alignments. It always makes me facepalm when I hear people proudly proclaim that they "removed" alignments in their games without actually having thought about the consequences.

Dude, go fuck yourself.

You're trying to turn a quick "hey give me some feedback on this brainstorming" thread into yet another alignment argument again for no apparent reason.
You've confused an inline explanation for why I needed to change something with a "proud proclaimation"
You're implying that I haven't thought about the consequences in a thread I started to discuss interactions of making minor houserule changes to adapt the BoG houserule set to accommodate not using BoVD material and then made a decision based on feedback and the interactions of that houserule change with a homebrew class used in the game.

You could save everyone time by just typing misspelled swear words at me in the future.

CatharzGodfoot · Post by **CatharzGodfoot** » Wed Dec 28, 2011 10:12 pm

Yeah, the last one is probably best. Although it should probably be spelled out that permanently preventing healing is not normally a valid use of the curse spell (if nothing else, so that you can have cursed blades that don't completely supersede wounding ones).

RobG · Post by **RobG** » Thu Dec 29, 2011 5:28 am

Cursed Blade is a 4th level assassin/hexblade spell that prevents healing. You could base the effect off that.

The dmg wounding ability is actually very good when you do the math. It works out to 1 point of damage per 2 hit dice of your target, assuming he has a Con score. Once youre at high levels it deals more damage than Impact or any 2 elemental enchants

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Thu Dec 29, 2011 8:27 am

Thanks for the tip, but upon digging out Spell Compendium, I see that Cursed Blade requires tracking damage from the weapon separately from damage from the weapon's properties until the curse is removed, so it can go fuck itself too.

In a related story, we disagree about DMG wounding really really hard. Suffice to say that if I thought it was good, this thread would not exist.

RobG · Post by **RobG** » Fri Dec 30, 2011 5:21 am

Id rule out a bleeding type of effect. Wounding was a bleed effect in 3.0. I think it was changed because it was a one-hit kill against animals and mbeasts who couldnt reasonably heal themselves, if I remember correctly.

You dont like Con damage. It can be a pain to keep track of so I get that.

How about a pain effect like save or be nauseated, save or be staggered.. etc. Fort save of maybe 15 + 1/2 char level?

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Fri Dec 30, 2011 6:56 am

RobG wrote:Id rule out a bleeding type of effect. Wounding was a bleed effect in 3.0. I think it was changed because it was a one-hit kill against animals and mbeasts who couldnt reasonably heal themselves, if I remember correctly.

Which is why I included the link to First Aid in my bleeding versions. That has a DC of 15 and can be done untrained, so unless a critter has penalties on top of a 1 Wisdom, they can lick their wounds and hope to succeed.

You dont like Con damage. It can be a pain to keep track of so I get that.

Dude, there is already a Dungeonomicon monk with a Con-damage style in my PC group. That is borderline too good in how it works with iterative attacks, but it has the speed-of-play advantages that it always subtracts HP == HD and only critters immune to Con Damage ignore it. The DMG wounding means that I would have to track even/odd instead of just HP totals and also means that I would have to explain why Elementals, Plants, Oozes, and doods with Heavy Fortification are immune to the weapon's Con damage but not the monk style or the Witch's Poison to my playgroup repeatedly.

Meikle641 · Post by **Meikle641** » Tue Jan 03, 2012 12:33 am

I think the Cursed option is the best option listed. Since Clay Golems can do that already, I don't see a problem.