Wounds & Afflictions system

[altug]

I Think a wound & affliction system can fit well in Daggerfall fights. Got the inspiration from Dominions series. From its manual:

"Whenever a unit is struck in battle, it may suffer an affliction. The chance of this occurring is simply the
% hit points lost in the blow. So if a normal 10HP soldier receives two 4HP blows, he would have a
40% chance and then another 40% chance of getting an affliction. "

Since dominions series have fake locational damages, daggerfall can use same randomized wounds & locations. For example recieving a wound on a chest will have the most chance percentage while hands, legs or eyes can have smaller chances. Those afflictions can affect fighting & magic usage disadvantages until a proper heal.

A chest wound may decrease max HP, an eye affliction results a negative effect "to hit" attribute, a hand damage make your attack speed slower etc. similar effects can be added to the list.

[Ralzar]

I am not sure what you are referring to here, as the game already has poisons and diseases that work pretty much like this. However, I believe only some monsters have disease and poison? Like bats and rats?

[BadLuckBurt]

I am not sure what you are referring to here, as the game already has poisons and diseases that work pretty much like this. However, I believe only some monsters have disease and poison? Like bats and rats?

He's talking about actual battle damage that you would need to treat. Another one would be breaking an arm because that Nord swinging his hammer managed to hit you just right.

[Ralzar]

Ah, riiight. Like critical injuries. I use these in my tabletop rpgs and can often linger a long time after combat.

That could actually be all kinds of fun. There's lots you could do with more permanent damage:

Broken arm: Can't equip that arm. Hope you're not using 2-handers.
Broken leg: Halved movement speed.
Injured eye: Half the screen is faded dark?
Injured ear: Sound is moved to one speaker.
Injured nose/face: Reduced Personality.

But also, just having injuries that you can't simply sleep off during a night would be nice. You would have to get cured in a temple or something to fix it.

[altug]

Excatly, right, disease mechanic have similarities but their outcomes make sense for diseases obviously which is fine. And you mostly got them from animals and undeads. However, wounds can use same mechanic but can focus on outcomes from physical body wounds from every foe&fight, or even a high fall. Crippled legs, eye damage etc.

[Silence]

I am all for the injuries and diseases having effects in other characters, too.
People should shun you if you carry a blatantly evident disease, lest they catch it too. Say... if you don't cure your disease after the first three days of contracting it (for similarity with lycantropy and other conditions).

[DaveCastle]

How would you harmonise this with existing game mechanics? Would your own Cure Disease or your stronger Heal spells reattach the bones in your crippled arm or regrow your poked-out eye (like, 40+ HP heal in a single cast removes a critical wound while two 20 HP heals don't)?
Perhaps non-casters could use their Medical skill and some sort of first aid supplies as a temporary patch-up job that at least allows them to use their weapons (even with a moderate speed/damage penalty) or treat their bleeding until they can find a temple? It would be nice if the Medical skill had more utility than a simple time saver. As it stands, I only picked it (and Lockpicking) as Minor skills for roleplaying reasons.

[Silence]

Good questions.
I'm writing on the go, but... I would say the effects are not the same as injuries, so they should be healed differently.

Injury is related to HP, some immediate threat to your life — we can think on it as blood loss.
Injury effects, on the other hand, aren't life-threatening, but are crippling.
So if you lose an eye, there's gonna be blood loss *and* sight loss. The later won't (directly) kill you, the former will.
Healing spells would work stopping blood loss and closing wounds, but they won't straighten a broken bone, or regrow an eye — you have «healed bad», so to speak, so you would go on limping on your broken leg, no longer bleeding, but with the bones at an odd angle, for example. To fix them as new, you would have to get specialized attention.

An alternative (or complementary option) is that the instant-healing spells blasted in combat provide the first aid, but what fixes broken bones is medical skill applied with every rest. To retain the interest of the afflictions system, however, resting+medical shouldn't *completely* remove the effects right away. Perhaps there's some sort of «degree» to an affliction, and every rest brings it closer to zero. That degree or level could also be used to balance how much the limp affects you while it lasts.

Some effects, like losing an eye, are beyond what medical skill can fix. *However*, someone sufficiently adept to the restoration school might be able to regrow that eye by helping his medical skill with magic in every rest. (In practical terms: you only regrow an eye if you have enough restoration + medical. It takes time, and each time you rest you awaken with some missing spell points which you spent on caring your wounds).

[Ralzar]

Another way of healing that could be considered:

Extended stay at a temple. Say the magnitude of the affliction determines healing time. So you have to pay the Temple to stay there for maybe weeks or months to heal up. Ingame, this would just be a time skip like Fast Travel.