Hurting Your Players but Making it Fun || D&D w/ Dael Kingsmill 

In a past game, every time a character went unconscious, they would get a scar of related relevance. Players loved the consequence!

These videos are such ridiculously high quality. Every time a watch one of your D&D videos I'm instantly inspired to do prep. (not that the other ones aren't enjoyable) The fact that you gave us copies of the tables AS WELL as the idea itself for 0 cost... what the heck? Are you insane? Love this channel, thanks so much!

I can say from experience with frostbite, rewarming too fast can actually cause more nerve damage... Sincerely, someone who cant feel their toes much anymore. Btw I really like this because my main problem with most lingering injury rules are that A) they aren't fun, and B) they occur too often to feel earned or exciting. This feels like a good middle ground like it's a penalty but it shouldn't happen so often that it becomes just annoying. AND it gives players the choice if they want to explore having some permanent injuries rather than just flat out subjecting them to it.

Ancient Wiseman: What is your spirit animal? Me: *Looks over at no frills in dressing gown editor Dael* Ancient Wiseman: Well? Me: You know the usual. Like ... a Panda? Ancient Wiseman: ...

If you like this, wait until you get a load of Star Citizen...

Rather than impose a minimum level, I would require it to be a minimum amount of damage, say 10hp. Squishy characters will be protected longer and the tanks will be collecting battle scars earlier.

"Finally the toxicity table" Oh no not a comment section table!!! NOOOOO

This table needs a safe word. Seriously, though, the complications of magical healing are really a neat addition and visualization of that D&D trope. It grants so much re: why one doesn't just Cure Wounds out of every problem.

Your old injuries table was the best of its kind, and I've been using it ever since you posted it. I cannot express how excited I am that you have expanded it.

We just started playing, my lvl 1 cleric's player is a nurse and this is going to blow him away. Thank you very much for putting this out.

The house rule in my games about a natural 1 is that something goes hilariously wrong. It takes some of the sting out of an automatic fail and encourages creativity.

Hear me out, in my groups homebrew headcanon magical healing doesn't scar while letting an injury heal naturally does. This leads to a sort of visual indication of poverty and access to healing among PCs and NPCs. If someone has scars that becomes significantly more offputting to polite society but makes them blend in with unsavory types like a thieves guild or pirates. It can also be a marker of someone atheistic whose barbarian tribe rejects magical healing. Unrelated to the above, in settings where magical healing accelerates the natural healing process it might be interesting to keep in mind that telomeres shorten every time cells divide, shortening overall lifespan. Not that adventurers live very long anyway, but it could be interesting to incorporate into the lore of your world.

Dael, I don't know if you'll ever see this, but your S.P.E.R.M. acronym is saving my ass in my Slavic history class, which coincidentally, I was in when this new video dropped.

Leaving a comment to satisfy Al Gore Rhythm. But seriously, I love the stuff you make! Glad to see another great video!

This is some inspired stuff, I love it. Also I can definitely imagine a whole cosmetic industry built around inflicting mana rush and healing it with magic.

Game I played in: The wizard ritually connected a skeletal arm after having his natural one amputated due to a magical affliction.

I am here for the random, off hand Benedict quote from Much Ado About Nothing. Favorite Shakespeare play.

Yes, she’s back!!!LoL

I was missing your vids on my feed!!! And I really like this table. They don't feet the general pace of the story, but are a match made in heaven for my 2/3 stages boss fights.

Okay, yes, this is an injury system that I like. Mostly because while the effects do matter, it is (for most of them) relatively easy to get rid of them at any level - though you might have to make it back to the nearest town if you don't have a field medic on the team. The results for 14 are interesting because they are actually a 3-round buff, but the 3 levels of exhaustion afterwards are rough because it takes 3 long rests to get rid of it - unless someone knows Greater Restoration and spends the 5th level slot plus 100GP diamond dust to reduce it by 1.

As a computer scientist, I'm very excited to hear you're learning programming. Also didn't realize you were in that Colville 4e game. Got lots of videos to check out now This video came out at a perfect time for me. I've been kicking around the idea of a Wound System in order to making healing conscious characters more meaningful/important, and an Injury System like this is another thing I've been looking for! Can't wait to get to use it in my own games.

I would like to verify that I do change my avatar and name every month based on a discord poll. Why? Because it was a funny bit that got out of hand and I'm stubborn

I would love to see a video on how you would make curses feel fun. Like raid a pharaohs tomb, punishment for your greed curse. Or glancing at the necronomicon and learning just too much.

I was just thinking about how much I missed Dael's vids last night!

This is really interesting--I'm honestly really reminded of the injury system in the old GW game Inquisitor, a sort of weird...TTRPG/wargame hybrid that I love very much. Injury thresholds and location-specific consequences and stuff very much in line with this.

I am in love with these kinds of consequences! A little worried that a roll on one of these tables would be done in just about every fight, at least in the beginning, but if this was held up against the enemies as well, if could potentially make fights much more theatrical and dramatic, and possibly much shorter! A single good shot from the rogue or a critical from the barbarian against the target, be they man or monster, could potentially severely cripple the enemy within 3 turns!

Thanks for another great and fun video. It always warms my heart to hear about people learning not only to program but also game programming.

Aaahhhh! Another Dael video! So long between each video but always worth the wait ☺️

AAAAAH!! I was just wondering when you would be able to upload another video! Perfect timing! Thanks for all the content you make!

So happy to see a new video from you! I also really like the tables and the idea, even though I would say that if the rolls (the ones you do every turn) are meant to represent you resisting the pain maybe it should be wisdom and in the case where it's like maintaing balance for the inner ear injury it might be dexterity and so on.

This is lovely, this makes different types of damage feel real. Glad you made it, all tho, my players won't be so glad >:)

Yooo this is awesome. You really actually made it fun and this is the first time I’ve actually felt compelled to add injury mechanics.

Thank you so much for this! I loved the concept for your first one but being a new DM I wasn't sure I'd be able to adapt it to the situation well enough in the moment. This will definitely help me. Also your Materia Media system is also amazing! I would love to see how you would adapt it to also handle general magical potion brewing (or even if that's something you would do) in addition to medicines and poisons.

Hurrah! a new Monarch Mentor video. Always happy to see a new Dael in my feed 👍

Thank you for posting more DnD content, i really enjoy your videos.

Wicked. Always glad to see more content from you.

When I saw your Edditing Mode then must say: You look amazing! I will defenitly use your tables in my D&D campain on my players. Thx 😁

I'm DMing my first game with some players who've only played roll playing focused games so I'm so excited to introduce them to some cool battles. Needless to say, I've been glued to Dael's videos haha

You're almost at 100k subs! That's so cool! Hope you get there soon!

Of course, Dael uploads when I don't have time to watch anything! :)

You're so generous to have looked up these injuries already, but like, are they really that bad? Let's see--OOHH GOODDDD!!!!

Yay for Missy Higgins, I love her music. We've missed your face 😁

as someone running a grave domain cleric whose entire background revolves around coming to worship the raven queen through his time spent as a field medic/combat surgeon: thank you

Very good video. This system is madness, I like it 10/10

Thank you for the requisite dose of Missy Higgins, your service is appreciated

I would love to see how you keep up with all this, a look behind the screen as it were. As a new DM I feel like this, among all the other tables I juggle, is a huge undertaking.

I love watching the openings to your videos LOL

I'm now cooking my next campaign with very gritty feel and emphasis on long term consequences (and with magic healing that changes body in way that limits natural healing) and this is godsend.

First, I applaud the investigations you did to develop these tables (rather than just making stuff up)! Kudos! Second, you mention repeatedly in the tables and the RU-vid video that magical healing sets these effects permanently, but non-magical healing (i.e. Medicine checks) … wait, nope, no rules for how that applies? My sorcerer (42 hp) took a 28 pt burn wound from a dragon (actually happened in a recent game). For the sake of argument, I rolled a “2”, +5 on the CON save (14 CON + proficiency), which gives me a 7: third-degree burns to the chest, half-movement, and I’m passing out in 3 rounds. (curiously, no impairment to my attacks, like with result “8-10”) The dwarven cleric rushes to my side; be has a bevy of magical cures available, but he happens to also be trained in Medicine, and has the Healer feat. The player pauses, looking for rules about “should I use Cure Wounds L3? roll a Medicine check? use the Healer feat?” What should he do? Your proposal seems incomplete here…

I'd love to see what she thinks of Rolemaster.

I just started my new campaign, this is perfect!

In my games, HP is just a Stamina Bar - which is why you can just drink something and suddenly be full of energy again. Scars can only come from the fatal wound that brought you Unconscious (and dmg dealt while Unconscious). If a character is brought back from Death somehow during a battle I give them 1 lvl of Exhaustion. & If I critical against my players and they are reduced to 0, they lose a limb. "Scars are what make a Character," that's what I always say!

I thought for a moment there'd be no post-outro bit! Fool that I am. I listened to the 'Mud & Blood podcast' review a game just yesterday (it was largely negative) and these injury tables look better than ones written for a deliberately dark & gritty game! Good research pays off. 😎

Capital-N Nice ideas. Especially with the last point: how you can deal with major, lasting injuries in a fantasy game. (Heboric Ghost-Hands ... well, probably doesn't like this either). I think I'll use an adapted version of this where every damage type runs the risk of losing a limb.

Great video! I’d like to work this into the campaigns I run, though I might rule that it only comes into play once the party hits level 3, otherwise I foresee a lot of poor, maimed first and second level adventurers.

Cool idea + didn't know you were editing the 4e streams down, time to watch em

She's in focus! I didn't think that I'd see this day!

The Rogue should take the Wyvern's sting as their new arm! Replace that necrotized limb with a monstrous stabby thing!

Stay safe, Ms. Kingsmill!

You are amazing and you have great ideas!

Editing Dael seems pretty chill, I don't mind her interruptions.

This is brilliant work😀 gj

Love that editing Dael had to add the * note for the 22 HP wizard taking 22 points of damage and somehow caring that they might fall unconscious in 3 rounds. XD Thanks :) Curious how you handle healing magic like Heal, which is pretty much just "everything's better now and there is no better healing magic in the universe". Still just temporal manip accelerating the natural process including purging poisons and mental afflictions? Additionally, at what point do you normally start involving tables like these? I imaging the 2nd level bard with 16 HP taking 8 and then rolling poorly and passing out for the rest of the fight and waking up with a big scar across their negotiating face. Always legit curious.

Great Much Ado reference, rarefied air

This is excellent.

finally, a new use for Divination Wizard's Portent

The way you're using the injuries table seems to be more in line with the DMG's combat optional rule for its System Shock table. Obviously greatly expanded. I'm probably going to build a table that moves untreated system shock damage over to lingering injury, but I do really like the tables you have here.

This feels like an improved version of the 2.0 system shock. But this gives a feel of realism instead of a possibility that you instadie even though you still have a lot of hit points left.

It's 4:30am Dael!! Also video looks great and I agree!

This is great, I think I'll playtest it with my group to get a feel for it and try to showcase it to my players so that we can maybe implement it on our games. Most important thing is to know if our players are into a rules change, not just how good we feel the rule is. I was maybe thinking to tweak a tiny little something, maybe anyone reading this will be kind enough to tell me what they think: I really like Dael's idea that a Natural 1 in the damage saving throw should be considered a critical failure and thus ignore any modifier and send you directly to the 1 in the corresponding table, but rules as Written Natural 1's and 20's are only considered Critical in the case of attack rolls, not ability checks nor saving throws. {That's generally why a natural 20 persuasion check is not automatically going to convince a King to gift you their kingdom and a Natural 1 Perception check does not make a character unable to see an enemy directly in front of them in broad daylight (though i don't see the point in rolling checks to resolve actions that should always succeed or always fail)}. There aren't ground rules for critical failures nor successes built into mechanics that make you roll a saving throw in 5e. Rolling a Natural 20 to escape a Fireball still means you have to add your bonuses (or penalties) to try to make the caster's DC and you will still take half damage if you pass your saving throw. Rolling a Natural 1 to escape said Fireball does not automatically make you take double damage or force any other bad thing to happen. We could certainly try to improvise good and bad things happening with critical fails and successes (a crit fail on a dex save against a fireball could mean that the character trips trying to rush for cover, falling prone on top of taking the damage), but we'd have to be on our toes to improvise on less obvious situations and a certain degree of consistency is needed in the rules adjudication, if you start making random calls whenever you can think of something fast enough but when you can't you simply keep going with the combat then you are making your players experience much less predictable, and that usually makes players less happy with the game. And it would certainly be a lot of pain and bookkeeping to come up with set situations for crit fails and successes for each spell and effect beforehand, and probably not worth it. Moreover, I have been a 5th edition DM for a while now and of all the PC's i've been DM for I've seen maybe two that had 0 or less in their constitution save modifier, meaning that that if you allow a player who rolls a Natural 1 to add their bonuses it's most likely that you'll never get to see the effects of the worst option in each table, making psychic damage even more terrifying (trust me, PC's with 11 or less Intelligence are quite more likely to exist). The crux of the matter for me is that I want to use these rules and make rolling a Natural 1 mean that you get a 1 TOTAL, but I feel bad asking players to make a roll that can critically fail but can't critically succeed, I feel a certain degree of fairness is lost there. So, what do any of you think could be a fun way to add a critical success effect to the situations described in this video?

Great ideas. I’m totally stealing them!

i dont DM like i’ve done it once or twice with modules when i first started playing. your videos make me want to do it more than anything ever

woooo I keep thinking about more long lasting damages very much enjoyed as aways

Imagining Dael horrifically scarring a player in a dramatic moment and then just *Missy Higgins starts blaring from the speaker as you pickup a microphone and do the entire song*

Yay! Dael's back!! 🥳🎉🥳

I always liked your foraging and medicine system. Now with this I will finally get to use it without devaluing the magical potions. Just going to change some of the effects to heal specific types of wounds. (Which means I am going to have to edit the table... This will be bothersome...)

I really like the concept and your ideas for consequences. Though I think I'd make it dependent on the Medicine roll, and would make a similar roll for magic healing. Instead of taking for granted it always heals perfectly, just like you roll for damage on spells. Maybe it is harder to avoid the scar with magic healing. I'm thinking while I write.

In a game of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, after vanquishing a Troll (and NOT meta gaming that we knew it regen), we started to loot the room and after a couple of minute SUPRISE!!! Troll standing up in my back, it kick me and crit my character. Crit result : Broken spine, roll below Endurance OR be permanently paralysed IF roll succeed, Character cannot walk for 1 month O_O I was glad to pass that Endurance roll... and had to be carried by my team for the rest of the adventure... IT WAS AWESOME!!

Ah, you mean hurting the player CHARACTERS. I'll watch anyway, hahaha! - Okay, this is an amazing concept!

Yooooooooo new Dael video nice

I would group force damage with thunder on the concussive table. YMMV. On natural 1s, I got rid of fumbles, but kept my rule that Natural 1s automatically fail (but I also allow Take 10s for non-stressful situations).

Totally going to use this! I have a player who likes botw and wants a prosthetic like link in the new game

This is great stuff, and speaking of coding, this is exactly the kind of thing I would strongly value within a crpg, but in a tabletop rpg I feel like this is just slightly to much admin, especially during combat, which is already pretty dense in 5e rules.

Ouch dude Clement the Bard, I feel you. When I was maybe 11 or 12, I pissed off one of my brother's 14- or 15-yo friends, who decided to tackle me, except I had turned away and didn't hear him coming and was in an awkward stance, so I ended up taking the full force of both of us on my left shoulder, snapping my left collarbone. I knew something was really bad and probably broken, and went to the nearest grownup to call my mom to come get me and take me to the doctor. Said grownup was very reassuring that no there wasn't anything wrong, here lift your arm up over your head like thi.... "AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHGGGGGGG" "oh yeah let's get you to your mom" Seriously lifting my arm with an unstabilized clavicle fracture is my 10-out-of-10 on the pain scale. I hope never to have that supplanted from its championship spot. That is some debilitating pain. I coulda done stuff but I'da had disadvantage af

Oops. A tad late this time. *clears throat* ANOTHER WONDERFUL DAY WITH THE LOVELY DAEL KINGSMILL! 🥰

So close to 100k subs!!! Hope it's before Christmas. I'm adding a few notes for my games to be more unique to specific player abilities- If a character has the Rage Barbarian Feature and rolls an Adrenaline Rush on the injury table, they may instead enter a Frenzy. If a character has the Sorcerer Spellcasting Feature and rolls a Mana Rush on the injury table, they may create a Wild Magic Surge whenever they cast a spell.

I like this idea.

Regarding nat 1s, at my table, a natural 1 is a failure, just like a nat 20 is always a success -- but your modifiers still contribute to the severity of your failure or the magnitude of your success, sometimes even allowing a do-over for some failures. That way, the rogue with a +11 to stealth (and... who doesn't have reliable talent yet...) CAN fail an easy check, but even a horrible fumble might end up with a near miss.

Oh my god i love this

I love everything in this video! But I think it’s funny that an Aussie had to make a Cold Injuries table and didn’t use the word *Frostbite* anywhere. 🍁 bless

For long lasting psychic damage scars, I always like to make them roll on the insanity tables

These are fantastic ideas but I feel breaks the conceit of D&D which is that only a wound to zero hp matters. My idea which meets all your basic goals is that an injury that takes a PC to zero hp leaves a permanent scar or visual injury. The player chooses the scar. If they need help roll 1d6 1 - face, 2 - torso, 3-6 limbs in order. In addition one level of exhaustion which does not stack with any other source of exhaustion or itself.

This is quite interesting. 🤔

Would you also apply this to NPC’s that take damage? Such as causing NPCS to collapse which might be a helpful strategy for your players if they know a high amount of damage could help end the combat sooner

You should put this up on the dungeon masters guild. Also this is what my die were used for.

If you're deafened and have vertigo, I'd say say that they fall prone and must make a DC10 save or have their speed reduced to 0 for the turn. For anyone who doesn't have vertigo, imagine looking up and feeling like you're falling constantly until you look back forward or down. And same for looking down from a high height. Now pair that with suddenly losing your sense of hearing (which you are probably VERY used to unless you've been deaf or hard of hearing most your life). You probably wouldn't be moving. Is it damning? Yep. Should you be more careful? Also yep.

The only thing I dislike about this system is that if your constitution saving throw has a modifier of +1 or higher, then you're completely immune to major injury results of 1 even if you roll a Nat1 on the save. I understand that it saves considerable time by removing the need to roll an additional die, but I don't think the trade off is worth it. A possible compromise could be that the GM rolls the major injury die roll (so on your tables you'd roll a d6 or whatnot). That would save some of the time.

I think I will add this to the early bronze age setting that I'm trying to DM.

I love this! Do you have a printer friendly version?

I would probably wait until lvl 3 to implement that as it would be really punishing on lower level (like, almost half the time and low ST). But this looks great, like, really great to make Medecine relevant, put consequences to wounds. I will definitively try to implement it ! I would ask : are the consequences permanent until treated ? Like "after 3 failures, you drop unconscious". Does the character remains until a medecine check, a simple heal, or the end of the scene/encounter ?