Wounds in Knave 2e
Now for a post with some actual RPG content. First up a simple one.
I’m gearing up to run Knave 2e in a play-by-post game, so of course I’m modding it to my tastes. I love the way wounds past 0 hp get loaded into the inventory system (and generally the way the inventory system is used in Knave and its various hacks). Usually just having a wound in your inventory is bad enough: it’s taking up precious space and is not as easily recovered as regular HP. But I wrote some added riders to various wounds for more effect (similar to Mausritter):
- Injured (Sprained, broken) Arm/Hand: You cannot use the injured arm to hold items or for fine motor tasks. You have disadvantage on tasks that require two hands. If the injured arm is your dominant hand, you also have disadvantage on one-handed tasks that require fine motor skills (lockpicking, writing, etc). If both arms are injured you can’t take most actions, or do so with a severe penalty.
- Injured (Sprained, broken) Leg/Foot: For one injured leg your movement speed is halved. You have disadvantage on tasks requiring use of both legs (such as climbing). If both legs are injured you fall prone and cannot move except to crawl (5 ft speed at most).
- Blinded: You fail at any tasks that require sight alone, and have disadvantage on attack rolls and similar checks. Attacks against you have advantage. When you move make a WIS check, if you fail you move in a random direction as you are disoriented. If you are only partially blinded (one eye injured, sand in eyes, etc) you simply have disadvantage on checks requiring sight.
- Deafened: You cannot hear and fail any tasks that rely on hearing alone. If only partially deafened (one ear, loud ringing) you have disadvantage on those tasks instead.
- Burned: Once per day when you have this condition make a CON check. If you fail, you gain the Infected condition, replacing the Burned condition.
- Infected: Once per day you take 1d4 damage from this condition and must make a CON check. On a failure you gain another Infected condition in a new slot (which does its own damage and requires a separate check). The old one remains. If you succeed, clear the Infected condition in that slot.
- Fatigue: All Fatigue clears after a rest in a safe haven. It can also be cleared with healing spells, abilities, and items (1 per spell/ability/item). If any Fatigue is in your inventory after a rest in a risky location, combine them all into one Exhaustion wound.
- Exhaustion: You have a -1 penalty on checks for each Exhaustion you have in your inventory.
- Concussed: You have disadvantage on mental checks (INT, WIS, CHA)
- Deprived: Such as from hunger/thirst, or magical wasting. You have disadvantage on physical checks (STR, DEX, CON)
- Persistent Wound (Bleeding, poison, acid, ect): Take 1d4 damage (or 1 generic wound) every round and make a CON check. On a success you staunch the blood loss, and turn this into a generic wound.
- Frostbite: Your movement speed is reduced by 5 ft and you take a -1 penalty on tasks that require fine motor skills for each Frostbite wound in your inventory.
- Spellburn: For each spellburn in your inventory, take a -1 penalty to your INT. If this reduces INT to 0 or lower, you can’t cast spells until your INT is positive again.
More to be added as I think of them.
Note advantage / disadvantage in Knave is a straight +/- 5 to a roll, though for my game I’m likely going to use the Boon/Bane system from Shadow of the Demon Lord and similar games.