Just FYI and for your rumination:

newTEW has Falling damage on p. 170 "Coordination check or fall ..15 ft...The fall causes 8 base damage with another 2 damage per bane and +1 critical for each chaos star."

2e falling damage was:

3 yards = 3 damage

6=5

9=7

12=9

15=11

18=13

21=15

25+=20

9 months ago my wife fell off an 11-foot cliff in real life, landed on her feet, and broke three bones. She couldn't walk for nearly 3 months despite modern medicine and multiple surgeries. She's still in physical therapy, and ends up completely worn out after an hour on her feet, or a mile walk. Even a remarkably gritty game like Warhammer really under-sells the damage and recovery time for pretty much everything.

</sob-story>

</soapbox>

I agree that damage/recovery in RPGs feels very unrealistic when compared to real-life examples.

RPGs (and many other games) probably under-sell damage/recovery for the simple reason that few wants to wait for months of in-game time to continue the adventure. At least there are permanent injuries in WFRP, they are quite gritty at least, many RPGs doesn't even have that.

Same often goes for movies, books etc. Recovering is often quick if a plot point does not require it to take time.

Most RPG's are simulating a fiction, not a reality. The question was never "would I believe it if my next door neighbour claimed..." it's "would i believe it if the writer said...", with fantasy often being "high" and conan types bouncing off yawnings and having falls broken by bushes and convenient loads of pillows etc., and yes it's boring to watch people lie around in bandages or do physio unless there's a plot point in there somewhere.

That said, "grim and gritty" argues low fantasy, a bit close to "what your neighbour claims".

My only critique of the TEW rule is "damage" when i would say "wounds", and give some benefits if failing for boons and comets (that's where the bushes and pillow carts come in). I have gone straight to critical wounds for falling damage myself (you fall, you will break bones or something).

Honestly, it would work better if "Wounds" was known as "Luck" instead. So when you reach 0, your "Luck Runs Out" and you are knocked out and receive a Critical Wound.

Critical Wounds could then only be healed during extended rest.

@valvorik: Sounds like a good houserule. Allways have getting least one critical wound when falling seems "realistic". And you could get more criticals if rolling chaos stars on the coordination roll, and maybe avoiding the critical you get a comet.

Yup, Mother Earth lays the biggest smack down of all.

Hail Rhya, take that Sigmar!

I just had two of my players fall down an elevator shaft.

While climbing down the chains of an elevator, one of the characters exceeded his Stress by WPx2 and fainted. While sliding down the chain and passing the last character, I allowed that character to attempt a Daunting Athletics check to attempt to catch him.

The catcher poured all his Fortune Points into it and managed it with one success, which led to him halting the fall and then loosing his own grip and falling as well (seriously, I was being nice just allowing him to attempt this at all).

So they both smashed into the crashed elevator below and received 15 Wounds and a Critical each. The character attempting to catch him went below 0 Wounds and so received another Critical. It'll be fun to start the next session with them waking up at the bottom of the shaft feeling like hamburger.

However, if I was doing this over again it strikes me that I would have done something like this:

Resilience test with difficulty based on height fallen from (1 Dice per 5 feet perhaps?)

Automatically receive 5*(Number of Difficulty Dice) number of Wounds

If the roll fails:

Recieve as many Criticals as Failures, up to the number of Difficulty Dice used.

Recieve 2*Banes number of Wounds.

Chaos Star: Draw two Criticals and apply the one with the highest severity. (If equal, GM chooses)

Movies can at least incorporate a hospitalisation/physio montage! RPG's simply do not have that luxury.

Or the GM could retire the character until such a point that you feel enough in game time has passed, and leave them with a permanent injury/disability of some kind. Not ideal mid session, but perhaps the player could take over a pre-generated character until they have the chance to roll up a new PC?

I know a guy who fell 25 metres in RL. His injuries were horrific, but he survived.

He had 5 fractures to his skull, both his lungs collapsed, his left femur basically shattered like glass. Apparently there was blood radiating from his body approximately 1.5 metres. Luckily he was in a sport stadium, so paramedics were administering aid within a few minutes of his impact, which undoubtedly saved his life.

After 6 weeks in a coma, and 6 months in hospital, he was left with metal rods, screws and scars all over his body. He is blind in his left eye. His physiotherapy went on for another 4 intense months, to re learn even basic things like QWERTY.

He has made a remarkable recovery.

Just FYI and for your rumination:

newTEW has Falling damage on p. 170 "Coordination check or fall ..15 ft...The fall causes 8 base damage with another 2 damage per bane and +1 critical for each chaos star."

2e falling damage was:

3 yards = 3 damage

6=5

9=7

12=9

15=11

18=13

21=15

25+=20

I generally make falling/crushing damage pretty severe depending upon the situation, but it generally breaks down as such:

GM rolls a number of Challege Dice = to the severity of the situation (i.e. 0 Challenge = you tripped backwards and landed on your head, 1 Challenge = You fell off a stationary horse, 2 Challenge = you fell out of a second story window...etc)

Results:

Suffer a # of Wounds = to Challenge Lv (So 3 Challenge Dice = 3 automatic Wounds)

For each Challenge (crossed swords icon) = suffer an additional Wound

Bane x 2 = Suffer 1 Fatigue

Chaos Star = Convert a Wound to a Critical Wound

I also allow PCs (sometimes) to spend Fortune to add Fortune Dice and/or add a Expertise Die IF they have training that's relevant and would help mitigate the damage.

Example: The PC (With a Toughness of 2) fails a Coordination check and falls out of a third story window. The GM decides this would be a 3d Challenge (Three purple dice). The PC has Coordination trained, so I allow him to add a single yellow die (to attempt to "roll with the fall). I roll the dice pool (3 Challenge Dice, 1 Expertise Die), and get 1 Failure, 2 Banes, and 1 Chaos Star. So the PC takes 1 Normal Wound (his Toughness soaking up 2 Wounds), 1 Critical Wound, and 1 Fatigue.

This may seem rather lite to some, but the addition of a Critical Wound makes taking a tumble (even a rather small one) a dangerous thing for most characters.

To keep this thread going, I'd like to ask how GM's out there would rule regarding damage taken from fire/burning AND damage taken from drowning?

I was considering a similar sliding scale based on broad concepts like the one's I use for falling/crushing damage.

So for fire/burning damage:

• 1d (Easy) = Accidentally burned by a torch or lit hearth (i.e. reaching into a fireplace to grab a burning note), kicking in/running through a flaming door, failed check at escaping a burning coach, etc
• 2d (Average) = Intentionally burned by a torch or fireplace (i.e. someone hitting a PC with a torch as an Improvised Weapon/Wpn damage + burn damage, or forcing a PCs hand into a fire), escaping a small burning building, splashed with a small amount of hot oil/wax or acid.
• 3d (Hard) = Failed check when escaping a large burning building (coaching house, manor, etc), splashed with large amount of hot oil or acid, "greek fire" damage (or the WFRP equivelant).
• 4d (Daunting) = Escaping a burning city, dragons breath, etc.

What do y'all think?

Drowning damage, I'm not so sure how to handle. Didn't the Deep River location card from tGS have rules for this? I don't have the card in front of me and can't recall.

About 3 different adventures have cards for fires of various sizes. Usually they just inflict fatigue, and that at a fairly slow rate so you can have a short fight in a burning building without it quickly becoming a TPK. IIRC, rolling a chaos star on such a card does an actual wound.

The dreadfleet POD had a card with rules for drowning, and come to think of it, a card with rules for falling from the crow's nest. I haven't looked at either of them recently enough to recall how they functioned.

For fire, I'd start with the Fire Breath creature special action and modify from there (maybe take a look at that broken flamestorm spell too for your daunting or epic stuff).

I don't have my TGs here either, but yea, if there's rules on there for drwoning, they'd be nice to have summarized.

How about this for an idea.

For every 10 feet someone falls they suffer 2 wounds (non soakable) and a critical wound and roll 3 white dice. For every success or boon you can discount one wound or for 2 successes or boons you can negate one critical.

Example:

Caradoc, the human soldier is thrown of a cliff and falls 50 feet. He will sustain 15 wounds which are unsoakable, 5 of which are critical wounds. He also rolls 15 white dice, scoring 5 boons and or hammers (average). He could write off 5 wounds, 2 crits and a wound or 1 crit and 3 wounds.

You could add extra dice for environmental issues, athletics training or whatever, but this would make falling exceedingly dangerous no matter what.

Fire Damage:

Fire or fire like effects will often render the victim unconscious long before they are actually fatal, so I would recommend basing the majority of the effect based on stress and fatigue. To replicate this, lets steal from modern medicine, 1st, 2nd and 3rd degree burns.

Every round that a character is exposed to a fire like source of damage (non magical) they suffer one point of stress or fatigue depending on source and Wounds equal to the degree of the source (non soakable). You then make a resilience test with a difficulty based on the degree of the fire. For every fail, you suffer an additional Stress or Fatigue, for every bane you suffer an additional damage.

Minor spoiler Gathering Storm (select text to see):

Aren't there rules for exposure to fire (in a burning building) in the Gathering Storm adventure?

Here're the existing rules for Fire:

Flame Breath (Ballistic vs. Target Deg (recharge 5)

Target within Med range

Special: add 1 black to the dice pool for each rank fo training the target has in Coordination.

RED SIDE

no additional difficulty

1 success: You blast your target with fiery breath and hit for To +4 damage

3 successes: as above, but Tou + 6 instead

1 boon: +1 damage

2 boons: +1 critical

Comet: +2 damage, +1 critical

2 banes: you suffer 2 fatigue

Chaos star: Add 2 recharge tokens to this action

GREEN SIDE:

As above except:

Difficulty 2 black.

1 succ3ss To+3 damage with Pierce 2.

3 successes: To+5 damage

2 boons: place 1 fewer recharge tokenon this action

Comet: Your enemies engaged with target also suffer this attack's damage

2 banes: you suffer 2 fatigue

Crows nest (dreadfleet)

All Observation checks gain:

1 boon: Add 1 success to the results pool

All physical actions gain:

2 chaos stars: You fall. Make a Hard (3d) Athletics (St) check to grab onto the rigging and stop your plummet. Failure means that you hit the deck and suffer 3 wounds.

Deep River goes over being swept downstream, but doesn't cover drowning.

Overboard (dreadfleet) -- COVERS DROWNING

Unless you spend a manoeuvre 'treading water' each turn all actions gain:

1 Bane: you slip under the churning water and suffer 1 wound and 1 fatigue

Your stance becomes neutral, and you may not adjust your stance while Overboard.

jh

Here're the existing rules for Fire:

Flame Breath (Ballistic vs. Target Deg (recharge 5) ...

I don't particularly feel the Flame Breath card has any more "fire rules" weight than any randomly chosen Bright Order spell. Basically, it's just a dragon's version of Magic Dart. Useful if you're making a fire-using monster, but not terribly relevant to environmental effects, etc.

Stronger precedents are set by the existing fire-based Terrain cards: Burning Barge, Burning City, Burning Building, and possibly Lava Flow (but that last step is a doozy). On my way out the door right now, so only time for fast paraphrase:

Burning Barge: 1 Fatigue at end of turn, and if you roll 1 Bane. If you are fatigued at end of turn, suffer 1 wound instead.

Burning City: Chaos Star = 1 stress and 1 fatigue.

Burning Building: Resilience vs 2 Purple or suffer 1 fatigue each turn. Eventually upgrades (via progress tracker) to 3 dice and 1 wound instead of fatigue.

Lava Flow: Gain the Scorched Condition until you move away. Chaos Star: Coordination vs 2 Purple or you die. 2 Chaos Stars = Auto-Death. Seriously.

Scorched Condition: End of turn, gain 1 Fatigue. If you are Fatigued, gain 1 wound instead.

Here're the existing rules for Fire:

Flame Breath (Ballistic vs. Target Deg (recharge 5) ...

I don't particularly feel the Flame Breath card has any more "fire rules" weight than any randomly chosen Bright Order spell. Basically, it's just a dragon's version of Magic Dart. Useful if you're making a fire-using monster, but not terribly relevant to environmental effects, etc.

Stronger precedents are set by the existing fire-based Terrain cards: Burning Barge, Burning City, Burning Building, and possibly Lava Flow (but that last step is a doozy). On my way out the door right now, so only time for fast paraphrase:

Burning Barge: 1 Fatigue at end of turn, and if you roll 1 Bane. If you are fatigued at end of turn, suffer 1 wound instead.

Burning City: Chaos Star = 1 stress and 1 fatigue.

Burning Building: Resilience vs 2 Purple or suffer 1 fatigue each turn. Eventually upgrades (via progress tracker) to 3 dice and 1 wound instead of fatigue.

Lava Flow: Gain the Scorched Condition until you move away. Chaos Star: Coordination vs 2 Purple or you die. 2 Chaos Stars = Auto-Death. Seriously.

Scorched Condition: End of turn, gain 1 Fatigue. If you are Fatigued, gain 1 wound instead.

Awesome summary!

Having seem these various rules side by side, I've come up with a consistent way to rule fire hazards/damage, that will fit nicely with my Environment Damage house-rules.

The criteria below assumes the PCs aren't taking direct damage from a fire as of yet, but are navigating an area that is ON fire (a city, building, forest, etc). If a PC actually falls into fire, or is otherwise directly wounded by fire, then the Environmental Damage rules kick in.

Intensity/Size/Proximity of Fire (i.e. how close and intense is the fire to the PC?)

Minor = roll a Chaos Star on any check = suffer 1 Stress & 1 Fatigue

Moderate = Resilience vs 2 Purple or suffer 1 Fatigue each turn

Major = Suffer 1 Fatigue at end of Turn. If you are Fatigued, suffer 1 Wound instead.

Environmental Fire Damage Severity (i.e. how long has the PC been exposed to direct flames?)

Exposed to flames for 1 round (1st degree burns) = 2d

Exposed to flames for 2 rounds (2nd degree burns) = 3d

Exposed to flames for 3+ rounds (3rd degree burns) = 4d

etc, until the PC is a charred corpse.

If the PC takes damage from fire (falls into a fire, has fire/flaming oil thrown at him, etc):

Roll a # of Challenge Dice = to the fire's Severity (see table above)

Results:

Suffer a # of Wounds = the Fire Severity

Challenge = Suffer an additional Wound

Bane x2 = Suffer 1 Fatigue

Chaos Star = Suffer an additional Critical Wound

Note: Also, PCs ALWAYS take a minimum of 1 Wound of Environmental Damage, regarless of Soak. When damaged by fire, Toughness may Soak Wounds, but armor does not.

Example: A Roadwarden PC has entered a burning coaching house to save a small child, as soon as he enters the building, which is already half engulfed in flames, the GM rules that this is a Moderate fire that will become a Major fire in three rounds (using a progress tracker to track the intensity), and that the PC must make an immediate Average(2d) Resilience check. The Roadwarden does so and fails, suffering 1 Fatigue. He will continue to suffer Fatigue each turn unless he passes his Resilience check next turn or leaves the building.

Two turns later the Roadwarden has reached the child and having wrapped her in blanket is heading for the door when he tries to kick in a flaming door and rolls a Chaos Star. The GM says that a loose piece of flaming door frame falls and hits the Roardwarden on the back, causing 2d of Environmental Damage. The PC rolls 2 Challenge dice and spending a Fortune Point, a Fortune Die as well. His results are: 3 Challenge, and 2 Banes. That's a total of 5 Wounds and 1 Fatigue, though the PC has a Toughness of 3 so he soaks 3 Wounds and takes 2 Wounds and 1 Fatigue.

He gets out of the buidling before the end of the third round so only takes an additional 2 Fatigue.