But
aren't they though? Hit Points are kind of unnecessary beancounting that gets in the way of fun.
Note; This blogpost is partially a shitpost based on the above comment, which is in itself a bit pretentious and shitposty. I don't seriously have a problem with hit points, nor any disconnects they may cause with the verisimilitude of the game world- such as high level characters being not threatened by lesser weapons. This can be explained away easily. Plus in terms of it being beancounting- I've personally never experienced any annoyance at keeping track of HP. If anything, players seem to enjoy having a rolling HP total to keep track of, the one figure on their character sheet that is the most pressing and important of them all. After all, if that number reaches zero, you'll die- it's more important and interesting to keep track of then say weight or rations. Plus, Hit-Points are probably one of the strongest metrics of risk-vs-reward gameplay and the most obvious "resource" of the resource management common in roleplaying but especially in OSR play. You have a clear and obvious sign of how much danger you are likely in at any given time simply by knowing how damaged you are- knowing roughly how much damage a failed roll or an enemy monster will do gives you more tactical decision making then if, say, a game simply had every hazard have a small chance to kill you.
However, especially in progression-based games with growing health pools, combat encounters with multiple damage and healing events in any given combat- monster attacks and spells, healing potions or allied spells, inspirations and temporary HP, etc- these can be a bit distracting and take away from the immediately interesting part of simulating a game world; the threat in front of you. This concept made me think of how to streamline or move the Hit-Points and damage system of a generic roleplaying game into being something simple and easy to understand, quick to adjudicate, while also being able to plug in to as many existing systems as possible to avoid friction.
One system that has a non Hit-Points systems is Into the Odd. Now technically it does have Hit-Points, but these are more like a shield before you take damage to your Body stat, which also reduces your ability to fight or take further damage. (At least, that's how I remember it working- I could be totally wrong. Been a long time.) I actually like this system for a lot of reasons over a traditional Hit-Point system, since taking damage also impacts your ability to deal or sustain further damage- a more realistic take on injury that, while it can result in a death spiral, makes taking damage more meaningful. Traditionally; a character with full HP and one Hit-Point remaining have the same ability scores, same movement speed, same power of spells or attacks, and so on. It doesn't have to be realistic by any means but I think it gamifies the concept of taking damage or injury TOO much, making it harder to simulate and create situations that feel at home in the game world itself. As such, these combined factors lead to this very rough concept; The Peril System.
The Peril System
Whenever you are hit by an enemy attack, struck by an offensive spell, caught in a trap, encounter a natural hazard, or otherwise take any form of damage or risk- you encounter Peril. There are two types of Perils- Peril and Mortal Peril. Standard Perils essentially make your situation worse, requiring valuable time, resources, or inflicting nasty status effects or weaknesses that will harm your ability to continue fighting or exploring. Mortal Perils work differently. When you are struck with a Mortal Peril, your character is essentially toast- the same as a monster with a very powerful attack or instant-death spell. So for example, a dragon's Fire Breath would deal enough damage to kill most characters, so it would be considered a Mortal Peril, as failure against it would be deadly.
I also feel like I should mention here; all of this applies to the Players' Hit-Points, not monsters or NPCs. They still use normal systems. The idea is to get rid of player bean counting, but GM counting is par for the course.
This may make Mortal Perils sound extremely dangerous- but remember that the Peril is always done after your other form of mitigation or chance to avoid the danger. ie; Perils are the replacement for hit-point damage. So if a monster hits you on an attack roll vs your AC, then you are hit with a Peril. If you fail a saving throw, you might get hit with a Mortal Peril, and so on.
So if a monster hits you, instead of dealing damage, what negative thing happens to your character? It depends on the monster and situation. The general idea is that instead of standard damage, each infliction of an attack or spell does something negative and harms your character's abilities in some way. Some of this could be more mechanical (ie; dealing damage to stat points or causing morale checks), but the intention is that these are more flavorful, essentially roleplaying or game-world-simulating problems that crop up to make your adventure more difficult.
For example- a Goblin stabs you with a punji stick. Instead of dealing 1d4 damage; the wound washed clean or else you will get very sick and need to amputate the limb or die of infection. In mechanics terms, that means the party must have access to clean water in order to wash out your wound. They can expend a ration or a spell to use some water, or in some dungeons it would be trivial to find a clean stream to use instead. Note how despite not being a mortal peril, regular perils can still be very serious, it is still putting you in peril, just not immediate. It still represents a loss of either resources or weakens your party in some way, which is the point of HP loss, simply abstracted from numbers.
Instead of saying "my character's down twenty five Hit Points" in this system, you'd say something like "I'm sick, my shoes are melted to the floor, I'm blinded, and my damn hair is on fire". Both characters have taken the same amount of punishment and aren't looking too good.
Mortal Perils
Mortal Perils are a bit of a strange one. The idea behind Mortal Perils is to replace attacks that are dangerous enough to kill characters anyway; so attacks or spells that deal enough hit point damage to kill outright and that don't have another mechanic (like Save v Death) would feel about the same, but it may feel bad for a high level character to get instantly murdered by one bad hit against an otherwise regular enemy if it was strong enough to be considered "mortal". One simple concept would be that if the player characters are equal or higher level to the threat, then the 'Mortal Peril' becomes a regular Peril instead. ie; if you get bonked over the head by a troll's club as a staring character, your head gets smashed and you die, but if you're a high level character, the injury just stuns you for a round, dents your helmet, and makes you lose 1d4 points of Intelligence permanently. If you get hit in the head with a dented helmet, then it would be treated as a Mortal Peril instead, and so on. Simple way to incorporate player level into your survivability without using hit points.
The second Mortal Peril concept is to either use a simple lives system, or bennies, as an exchange to prevent instant character death. For instance, if you would take a Mortal Peril, you can give up one of your characters life tokens to just barely avoid death. You only have a limited amount of these and they do not come back per rest or even session- probably just per character. I really like the idea of starting with none of these actually, getting one per level up, and maybe healing or magic spells (such as Healing Potions) essentially restore these instead of healing hit points. So in-universe the healing potion is knitting together your wounds and restoring your vitality but in rules it's giving you back the one bit of protection you get from a one hit death. This is still basically a hit point system, just a much simpler and easier to track, so it doesn't 100% follow our guideline at the top, but I think it's a concession that makes the game more fun. I also think certain mechanics, monsters, or character classes could really add to a system as simple as this. Imagine if Paladins using Lay On Hands doesn't heal hit points, but instead just lets them give you their own life tokens as a way to protect their party members while sacrificing their own safety. Imagine if undead creatures that use drain life don't take away or restore their own hit points by suck away your "soul" temporarily, which means they basically steal a life token. But if you slay that undead, you can get it back, meaning you might be stuck in a dungeon in a lose-lose situation; do you go chasing after the ghost holding your last life token or do you take a risk on your return to the surface; with one lucky crossbow trap could kill you?
Final Mortal Peril concept- the DM picks a stat most fitting based on the Peril you are in and you can choose to half that stat permanently or die. Fail a save vs acid breath? Charisma halved. Yes, half, and the reason why it is a choice is because some people would rather just kill off their own character then continue on like that. I don't blame them. This could be its whole own post but for as much as the OSR/New-Weird/blogosphere loves their death and dismemberment tables, mutation tables, spell cataclysm rolls, their "scar" and "trauma" systems- people don't want to go on playing gimped characters, so just give them a choice to accept it and move on with a fresh character to roll. At least, that's what I would do with something this nasty.
Perils in Combat
The idea behind perils is to replicate the effects of HP. How do we do this in a fight? If you can take an unlimited number of perils, then characters can just fight forever without going down, right? Not necessarily. The idea is that perils put you in enough danger that you could be killed, but typically you'd need to get hit by a few or expend other resources (armor, one-time use abilities, lucky rolls, etc.) that eventually you could get worn down. As with the above example, higher level characters can downgrade certain Mortal Perils into regular ones- you could extend this concept to lesser Perils of a certain type. So in the above example Peril of getting stabbed by a nasty, shit-covered spear- a Paladin of a certain level may become immune to all earthly diseases. This means that for them? They can just ignore that Peril entirely. Would that make him totally immune to a goblin encounter? As per RAW, yes, which I think is fine. It's the equivalent of a high level character with tons of healing and action surges and the like all going into a fight against much lesser opponents; they realistically can't die from it so it's the same as not needing HP at all. But for most combat encounters, Perils work as a time, turn, and resource pressure as an HP replacement.
Regular Perils are also dynamic and can lead to character death and real danger. For example, a common peril of man eating monsters like Giants or Dragons may be a grab move. That Peril ties you up, meaning you can't attack and need to struggle to break free OR have a teammate come free you. But on the dragon's next turn, if you're still grabbed, it will attempt to bite your head off and kill you. The regular Peril has progressed to a Mortal Peril. The idea is the same as if you had been hit by a strong attack, and the same tension of being down to 1 HP and the next attack will kill you is the same here.
Status effects not specific to spells or abilities are also somewhat uncommon, but could be employed here. The difficulty is in keeping track. One example for a common catch-all sort of mechanic is whenever your character is bleeding. Since it doesn't have HP damage, whenever you bleed at all; the effect of the blood loss doesn't matter unless it's lethal amounts of blood loss or isn't bandaged (Mortal Peril?) so in this case, I would say that anyone who is suffering from a bleeding wound now enrages bloodsucking creatures; making them more likely to be targeted by them or having higher To-Hit rolls, stacking on more Perils, or potentially having the chance to upgrade a regular Peril into a Mortal Peril. Once again, we're starting to get into simulating the exact same thing as an HP system, so this still needs more ironing out, but I feel like there is a creative space here where this works.
Next; Weapons. Weapons are interesting here because player weapon choices tend to be more impactful, where as NPC weapon choices are less important since it's typically just the numbers that matter. Some games or systems may include alternate rules as weapons vs AC To-Hit tables, but the idea of players switching up what armor they wear or protection they bring along vs specific weapons (if they even know what they're going against) seems extremely niche and silly. In this regard, the Peril system actually offers more interesting gameplay, because Perils could be unique to weapon types or even individual enemy weapons. Normally you don't care if an Orc is smacking you with a d8 Axe or a d8 Longsword unless you have some special feature that gives you an AC bonus against that weapon type or some extremely niche scenario like that. Having Perils fixes that and could make fights more interesting. An example being the triangular wounds of a bayonet being less immediately deadly then say a sword or axe, but being much harder to stitch up makes them an interesting peril on their own. Once again, this is an NPC thing- players will still have all the fun of normal weapons since they're still rolling damage dice and all that.
Finally; Armor. The removal of HP means that Fighters or tank-type characters are going to be less effective in this system, being as vulnerable to standard Perils as other characters are MINUS the normal effectiveness of their AC, their saves, etc. since Perils happen AFTER normal mitigation. With that being said, I still think making Fighters more durable even when they fail their rolls or protections is fine and fits the theme of the game. Maybe it's a class feature, maybe it's just inbuilt in the system. As mentioned above, common Perils will often do things like "dent your armor" or "give you a scratch", which are not dangerous in an of themselves, but a second Peril of the same type will likely have a much worse effect. This means that the strongest armor (worn by Fighters) still grants additional protection as would having a higher HP pool, keeping the class roles and feeling of gameplay similar.
The Big Peril Table
Finally, to round out this blogpost, here's a big list of Perils. These Perils are listed alphabetically based on the type of damage or spell, with possible monsters that use these attacks listed in the parenthesis. Use the search function to find a relevant list of Perils.
To keep it interesting, each one has also been split into a d6 table, which you could randomly pick (whichever is most interesting) or roll on to keep encounters fresh. Higher numbers are also associated with more dangerous or costly Perils, so you could apply a simple modifier of +1 or -1, or have all enemies of a lower HD then the player character hit roll a 1d4 for the Peril instead of a 1d6, with higher HD enemies rolling a 2d6 and taking the better of the two rolls, etc. You get the idea.
Editing Note; about 80% through writing this table I realized I was just writing death & dismemberment instead of the idea of Perils that I had originally thought of. However, I think in the end it works, because perilous situations are too specific and situational to the fiction of the game world to be written in table format like this. In such a case, use the Peril concept as a method to weaken and add challenge to the game, and then this could be an additive version for more ideas, or an alternative De&Dis table for funsies. In any case, I hope you find some use out of it!
Acid (Slime, Ooze, Traps, Spells, Black Dragon)
If you're covered in oil OR can splash water on yourself immediately (takes a combat round if you have a bucket or can jump into a stream, etc.) you can lower the roll result by -2, but with a minimum of always 1.
[1] Your skin is red and blistered. You get -1 to Finesse/Lockpicking/Dexterity rolls until it has time to heal. If you roll this result while already blistered, reroll and take the new result.
[2] You jump away from the acid, narrowly avoiding it splashing on you, but you bump into the nearest large and fragile precarious object (like a giant urn) causing it to fall, shatter, and make a tremendous noise. If no large precarious objects are nearby, you bump into an ally instead causing them to get accidentally splashed with some acid and blistered (roll result one for them).
[3] You get a bit of acid on you. Each round you don't wash it, it burns through another layer. First round, puts a hole in armor and lowers your AC by -1. Second round, burns through your clothes and ruins your whole outfit. Third round you lose -1 Constitution as it burns your skin and flesh. You can also avoid this peril by spending a combat round throwing your armor off, but it will corrode away and be lost by the time you can recover it safely.
[4] Pool of acid forms around your feet as you jump onto an elevated surface like a table or large paving stone. The object is slowly sinking into the now weakened ground. You cannot move around to dodge or attack in melee. You can jump off yourself if you have Dexterity modifier of +1 or better, otherwise you need someone to rescue you. Requires a round from each of you to pull them to safety.
[5] Nasty burn in an obvious place; hands or face. It heals but not right,
-1 Charisma modifier the first time it happens. Every time after, simply
causes immense pain and makes unable to do anything but roll around in
agony until cool water or ointment is applied.
[6] Some gets in an eye. You go blind in one eye. If it happens again, it's the other one.
Arrows / Crossbow Bolts (Bandits, Elves, Demihumans, Archers, Traps)
Whenever you encounter an Arrow/Bolt Peril, your shield can block it if you're aware of the danger. Lower the roll result by -1 per AC bonus of your shield. If you get to 0, the arrow is stuck in the shield and has no other effect. Getting shot at by one archer is a regular peril, getting hit with a volley or an ambush by a group of highly trained archers is a mortal peril.
[1] The arrow misses you, but causes another problem. Flame arrow hits something explosive, giving you a round to run and jump or be exploded. Regular arrow hits your lantern you are holding, causing you to drop it and start a small fire. If you have a nearby animal or retainer that is not from a class feature (ie; not animal companion), the arrow hits them instead causing immediate serious but non-fatal wounds.
[2] The arrow narrowly misses and lodged itself in the hem of your robe, the
soft part of your cap, or the end of your cloak and pinned you to the
ground or wall. You can only move away if you pull the arrow out (takes a
round) or by pulling yourself free, which rips the article of clothing.
[3] The arrow grazes your arm or leg. You are now suffering a minor bleed.
The wound can be tracked by hounds, sharks, and intelligent humanoids if
it is not bandaged up.
[4] The arrow hits flesh on an extremity. To remove it, you must push the arrowhead through the flesh and bandage up the wound. The cries of pain will be enough to alert nearby patrols of your presence or attract predatory animals unless you can succeed a save.
[5] The arrow lodges itself in your achillies tendon. You are temporarily unable to run or walk. After removing the arrow, your overland travel speed is halved for the next few weeks until it is fully healed- either taking longer to travel or rolling for two encounters per hex unless you have someone to carry you or you're riding a horse.
[6] The arrow has pierced a body cavity or was glued on the shaft with honey and now cannot be safely removed. Once the shaft is pulled free, the arrowhead will remain inside the body for the rest of the person's natural life, causing them a small amount of pain when moving that area. (If you want a more mechanical impact: -1 Dexterity permanently.)
Blunt Damage (Ogres, clubs, living tree branches, falling rocks)
You can receive the same perils in this category multiples times each with stacking effects.
[1] Bruises to the arms and legs. -1 Strength until you get a good's night sleep.
[2] Bruises to the chest and torso. -1 Strength AND Constitution. Heals after a few days. Alternatively? You can't hold your breath for the rest of the day. Doesn't sound that bad until you have to run across the poison gas pits, or hide from the scary revenant black riders, or swim down the one-way-water tunnel of death.
[3] Knocks one object you're holding out of your hand. The object is as damaged as it would be if you threw it against the floor as hard as you can; since that's what basically happened. You get to pick the object.
[4] Dents your armor or chestplate. You can't breathe right until you take it off, giving disadvantage on all rolls until you do and losing protection once you do. Requires a noisy bit of hammering over a day (or a turn with a Dwarf) to buff the dent out. If you aren't wearing chest armor, it just breaks a rib instead, making you lose -1 Constitution permanently.
[5] Crunches one of your hands. You have to bandage it and wait for it to
heal up for a season before you can use it effectively again. You get
to pick the hand.
[6] Hits you in the head. You lose -1 Intelligence permanently and forget your name, how to get home, and favorite magic spell. If you're wearing a helmet, pick one of those three things and you'll remember it a few weeks later. If you're wearing padding underneath the helmet, you get to pick a second one, but you always lose the third.
Cold Damage (Ice magic, frozen enemies, ice fairies, abominable snowmen)
Every Cold Peril you are suffering from causes the next one to get worse, increasing the result by +1. If you get duplicates, just take the one above the one you rolled.
[1] You shiver, causing you to shake around anything you're carrying or holding. Only a real problem with a lit bomb. If you have a source of heat (torch) or are wearing heavy winter clothing, this only lasts one round, otherwise, one turn.
[2] Your teeth chatter from the cold, causing stealth to become almost impossible unless you can put something in your mouth to stop the noise. If you have a source of heat (torch) or are wearing heavy winter clothing, this only lasts one round, otherwise, one turn.
[3] Any liquids you are carrying (potions) freeze inside their bottles. This doesn't damage or waste them, but you do need to make a fire and spend a turn warming them up by it to thaw them out.
[4] One object you are wearing or carrying becomes brittle. Your warhammer is only good for one more attack, or it will shatter apart. Your breastplate cracks and deforms the next time you are hit, and so on. The object becomes dusted in ice and frost; if you can avoid using or damaging it will regain its normal toughness after it warms up in one turn.
[5] You develop hypothermia, losing -1 Dexterity per turn before you get warmed up. This requires at least a long rest to fully recover from.
[6] You are frozen solid. One solid attack by a blunt weapon or strong creature will shatter you into pieces (Mortal Peril). Until then, your party has to carry you around as a very heavy piece of "treasure" or encumbrance until they can find a place to thaw you out safely or use some sort of magic to restore you back to normal.
Curse Damage (ghost touch, cursed items, dark spells, ominous fog, witches, hags)
Most
of the time, the effects of a curse or touch are already spelled out.
This is more for getting his with dark magic or generic "damage" from
occult sources. Armor offers no protection, but a protective talisman or
holy symbol lets you roll twice and pick the least-worst result.
[1]
Bad Aura. Everyone around you thinks you feel off and there is a
feeling of unease. You make horses nervous and flighty, cats hiss, and
babies cry. It goes away the next time you go to church.
[2] Three laughing skulls, bats, little devils, or inky black crow spirits
start flying around your head. You get disadvantage to aim or spells and
you can't look up as they are going for your eyes until you manage to
shoo them away.
[3] Supernatural Fear. Make a morale check or flee. Even if you succeed the
check, you are still scared or nervous and get disadvantage on the next
one until you calm down.
[4] Depression. Like a Dementor's
kiss. Everything feels gray and meaningless. Character cannot do any
kind of performance checks and will automatically fail any magic item or
effect that requires a "will to live" or "force of personality" to be
used. Chocolate helps, but can only be cured by the next time you or
your party achieves a major victory.
[5] Your
life-force was drained, causing you to look older and your hair to turn
white. Whatever hit you with this peril has an object imbued with a
glowing light, and you can restore your life-force by retrieving that
object. If you're more hardcore, this can just cause premature aging
that you can't really do anything about; this only becomes a mortal
peril if you age up enough times that it could theoretically kill you
from old age.
[6] Voodoo Doll. The next time it makes
sense; you find a voodoo doll that looks exactly like you. You're stuck
taking care of it; as any damage it receives is reflected on you. Any
Peril that damages or messes up your inventory will effect the voodoo
doll. If you drop your pack into the river, you will start drowning on
land as the doll sinks, and so on. This one needs a curse-breaker to get
rid of it.
Fall Damage (Birds, dragons, rickety bridges, air magic, shot out of a catapult)
I imagine most fall damage would count as a Mortal Peril, since there are few outcomes depending on the height and few ways to save yourself. However, if you want a more Perils-As-Hit-Points way to simulate fall damage, here are some ideas.
[1] Collapse into a heap of dust. When you get up, you need to dust yourself off, else leave a small smoke trail or cough and mess up your next spell incantation from the dirt on you.
[2] You fall onto your side and feel something crack. It's not you; but it
is a fragile item on your person. Usually, just a single healing potion
or a wand if you're magically inclined; but a more specific or important
item can be broken instead if you don't have anything that could
realistically break on impact.
[3] Crash through an awning, top of a wagon, or bundle of trees and
carefully curated glassware. Besides being stunned for one round so you
can't run away, the owner of the store or traveling merchant you just
got flung into is going to be very angry and wants to implement a "you
break it, you buy it" policy. If you're traveling or in a dungeon, just
have yourself fall on your own camp or something idk.
[4] Breaks a leg. Requires an actual skilled healer to bind it up, and takes
a season to heal. You can't flee combat and travel at half speed
without a horse or wagon.
[5] As [3], but instead of into an allied or neutral force, you get thrown into a nest of vipers, a river of crocodiles, or dropping into the nest of a giant bird to be fed to her babies. You're still stunned for a round.
[6] You manage to catch yourself from a greater fall (mortal peril) but on an object that is slowly breaking or can't handle your weight; like a tree at the edge of a ravine or the last rope from the rope-bridge. Somebody needs to pull you up within the next turn or else it will give and you will plunge to your death.
Fire Damage (Flamethrowers, elementals, burning oil, dragon breath)
Fire hazards are the most chaotic. If you gain one of these perils while adjacent to an ally, they gain one too unless if they are fighting defensively or have some fire resistance. While this peril could be any that fit, I'd just make it a result of [1] to make it less harsh.
[1] Your hat, hair, or headdress is on fire! It will go out on its own in one combat round or in a few seconds unless if you jump, run, tumble (make a saving throw), etc. If you do this, then the fire spreads and get worse. Easiest way to fix it is to throw your hat on the ground and stomp on it. If it's not a hat you can easily remove, you'd better get our your knife and cut it off then instead.
[2] Singed. Eyebrows burnt off, black soot, cartoonishly blown back hair. You're coughing a lot and it stings; you cannot cast spells until you can wash it off in a cool clean stream or expending a water ration.
[3] Your whole body is tender and turned red from the flash-fire, meaning you cannot wear any clothes without extreme discomfort. Remove your armor and lose all magic properties and bonus AC until you cool off in a day.
[4] Crispy! Your outer clothes and skin are charred black or heavily burnt
and singed. You leave a black trail of soot wherever you go and have a
permanent black mark on anything you touch for the next 1d4 days. Any clothes you wear or objects you touch are permanently ruined and stained.
[5] You are engulfed in flame from head to toe. Stop whatever you are doing and run to the nearest source of water, fine sand, or something else to put out the fire. If you perform any other action the flame engulfs you and kills you. No, stop drop and roll doesn't work in medieval times, it wasn't invented until way later or something.
[6] One piece of metal touching you closely like a ring, helmet, or piece of armor is heated up so much it turns red hot. Your skin is burnt and fuses to the metal, meaning it cannot be removed without a skilled surgeon; akin to a cursed item. This is probably the most gross and unrealistic Peril on this list, but I think it's a cool way to do fire damage that isn't just "more burnt".
Fists (Unarmed strikes, monks, martial arts, punching traps)
If you got your own fists up and are in a fighting stance, you can reroll a roll of [6] on this table. That's only if you get hit with a suckerpunch.
[1] Arms, wrist, or body blows of little impact. You are folding back from the assault, but otherwise unharmed. You have -1 AC against this attacker but only for the next combat round.
[2] Hits you right in the side. You get -1 Constitution until you sleep it off.
[3] Take it on the chin- your footwork is wobbly. -1 AC from all attacks for the rest of this combat and you can't make any complex maneuvers like tumbles or dodge rolls.
[4] Stunning strike! Karate chop to the sternum! You can step back and be stunned for one round OR you get hit in the head and see double; you have a 50% chance to miss your intended target. You also can't read any spellbooks or count up treasure for at least a day.
[5] Your attacker can disarm you and either take your weapon, throw it away
in the most inconvenient place, or redirect your strike into the nearest
ally; whichever is worse for you.
[6] Out cold. Takes a few hours or smelling salts to wake you up. You're totally helpless if you're in combat, and your party members will have to drag you around until you can be helped.
Lightning Damage (shocking grasp, lightning bolt, thunder magic, storm giants, static discharge, Diablo 2 beetles)
Lightning damage can only effect you if you're grounded (have at least one foot on the ground), if you are hit with a lightning peril while flying it doesn't do anything until you become grounded or the next time you are struck with a metal item (in which case it hits whoever hit you instead).
[1] Your hair goes spiky and you get a little singed. Doesn't do much but makes you look ridiculous, -1 Charisma until you can groom yourself.
[2] Uncomfortable buzz. Anyone who touches you gets a mean static shock and disrupts any healing or blessing spells used on you. Lasts for a day or until you touch water.
[3] If you're holding a metal object like a sword or lantern, you have to drop it as it sparks wildly. If you're not holding a metal item, then you just get a nasty shock and your armor gets a little magnetic; lowers your AC by -1 against metal weapons.
[4] Temporarily electrified; you shake and are stunned for one round. If
you've gotten hit by another Lightning Peril this combat encounter, it
bounces to your nearest ally and stuns them too. If they were hit by
another Lightning peril before, then it chains off of them and so on.
[5] Knocked off your feet backwards from the source of the Peril in an arcing electrical explosion; 20 to 30 feet. Anyone you are directly next to or anything you were riding also gets blasted back but only half as far in a different direction.
[6] You get zapped really bad. Knocked prone, your heart stops beating. You'll die if someone doesn't do chest compressions for a turn (can't revive you during combat). Even if revived, you'll have seizures for the rest of your life unless restored by a powerful healing spell. (Once per session, the GM/DM can make you roll a save or you shake uncontrollably for two combat rounds. This is bad enough to make you fall off your horse.)
Magic Damage (Magic Missile, Arcane elements, Wizards, Familiars, Runic Traps, Spellbooks)
This Peril type is specific to flashy, arcane, wizard-y style attacks and spells; like magic missile or generic glowing energy beam wand/staff attacks. If you are hit by a spell that is elemental, then that element should be used first. If it's a telekinesis shove, use Blunt or Fist damage, If it's dark magic or from an evil witch, use the curse damage table instead and so on.)
[1] Blinding colorful lights flash before your eyes, causing you to make your next attack roll at disadvantage.
[2] Your skin is burned with arcane sigils and runes that glow in the dark.
You can cover them with clothing. They seem really mystical and spooky
but it's honestly just swearwords. Take multiple months to go away or if
you know the trick you can just rub a crystal over them to scratch them
off. You get -1 to saving throws vs spells while these runes are on your body.
[3] Random magic item that can be activated you are carrying goes off. To prevent this from being an easy TPK; the person holding the item can make a check to direct the magic spell towards enemies or in a direction where nobody can get hurt as long as they aren't distracted by another effect.
[4] Summons a 1 HD creature from another dimension either from your belongings, next to you, or jumping out of a portal to attack you. Its temperament and relationship to you is determined by a reaction check; it's permanently stuck on this plane until its killed or hit with another spell to send it back.
[5] One spell you know or have prepared at random has its effect reversed. The DM makes a secret note of this, but tells you that one of your spells HAS flipped, just not which one. If you study your notes and spellbook you can remember the spell the right way to do it and the trap is no longer set.
[6] You are turned into an animal! Roll a d20 vs your Charisma. If you roll under, you get to pick something small, harmless, and maybe useful like a rat or a bat. If you roll over, the DM gets to pick instead. While in this form you can't talk or attack but have full control and memory over your old self, but are vulnerable to being stepped on or eaten. You also drop all your items and otherwise become mostly useless. Your party members can keep you in their backpack to keep you safe. The next time you sleep and wake up, you're back to normal.
Piercing Damage (Spears, dagger points, rapiers, Monster teeth, spike traps)
If you're carrying a shield, you can have that pierced through or shredded to avoid any one of these effects.
[1] Grazes you, leaving a scratch. Next time you roll for any Peril result add +1 to the roll just to make it a little worse.
[2] Presses hard into you, stopped by a small trinket that takes the brunt of the force instead. Minor damage to a spellbook, bed roll, or medical bag you are carrying.
[3] You get bitten or poked in the neck. The force was only enough to break the skin, but you still have trouble breathing and make all rolls at disadvantage and you cannot cast spells. You must spend a round to catch your breath to end the effect. If you're in a dusty tomb, a smokey tavern, or breathing in foul miasma or ash it takes three combat rounds instead.
[4] With a sharp point coming at you, you drop what you're holding and grab it with both hands in a life-or-death struggle. You get stuck holding a spear (or the jaws if it's a big monster) by the shaft with your hands and can hold it for one round until it overcomes you and pierces your chest (Mortal Peril). Somebody else must succeed an attack roll to force the enemy off of you. You can hold the spear for an extra round per positive Strength modifier you have.
[5] The tip pushes into your flesh, causing you immense pain. If you're
getting bitten instead, the creature latches on. You're stuck in a
lose-lose situation; prevents you from moving. If you do pull yourself
off the spear, suffer bleeding and make all rolls at disadvantage until
you can be bandaged up.
[6] You get stabbed or bitten right in the torso, causing you to go into shock and require immediate medical care or your condition will worsen. You will recover after one season but only with a warm bed, good food, and a dedicated healer. If you're missing one of those things, lose -2 Constitution permanently. If you're missing two of things, you suffer complications and die.
Poison Damage (Snakes, Poison Darts, Dart Frogs, Assassins)
If the poison is bad enough that simply touching it can hurt you, probably go with the Acid table instead. If an arrow or other similar threat is poisoned, you only have to deal with the poison peril instead of the arrow peril; not both.
[1] You just start throwing up everywhere. If you ate today, you lose that ration and will need another later once you can stomach food again.
[2] You start turning green and lose -1 points of Wisdom or Strength, whichever is most fitting to the poison. If someone sucks on the wound and spits it out, you'll recover in a turn, otherwise, 1d3 days.
[3] Your veins turn black and travel up to your face and eyes. You become unable to speak for a day, which means no spells.
[4] You become extremely feeble and sickly the next time you have downtime, losing -3 Constitution which you
slowly recovery over a season. If you don't drink an antidote or chew
medicinal herbs in the next three days, then you lose -1 point of
Constitution permanently.
[5] You feel a looming sensation of dread, but no other ill effects thinking maybe it missed. If you don't do a folk remedy, drink an antidote potion, or have a healer watch over you constantly; you'll die in your sleep from the insidious, slow-acting poison.
[6] Immediately putrefies the extremity that was bitten. Every round, it spreads to the next part of the body towards the heart (finger to hand to elbow to shoulder to chest). Somebody has to cut it off before it spreads too far.
Psychic Damage (Aboleths, Mind Flayers, Horrorterrors, Magic mirrors, some magic items & traps)
"Psychic damage" in this case could mean actual psychic spells or enemies, or it more means emotional or brain/mental assaults as simplified and flavored through a fantasy lens. While the idea behind this Peril system is to avoid hit points, I think having points of sanity or whatever is fine as a way to soak the character-changing effects listed here. Maybe something like the roll result on this Peril table is absorbed with minor, curable effects equal to your Wisdom score, but once you exceed that, then the effects happen as written. Since these effects are purely mental and mostly roleplayed, they are more severe then the physical effects written on other tables.
[1] Your character becomes terrified for 1d4 rounds, being forced to run away or cower each round they fail a moral check or saving throw. If you're not in combat, save or scream and attract a wandering monster roll.
[2] You gain a minor phobia for whatever is causing the psychic damage or the last Peril category you rolled on. The phobia just makes your character intensely dislike and avoid it, but causes no other rolls or effects. If you get this a second time for the same peril, object, or creature the phobia gets so bad you run away screaming every time you encounter it.
[3] Your character becomes an amnesiac and forgets who they are or what they are doing for 1d6 exploration turns. During this time, their class abilities are removed and they can only do actions as an untrained commoner. They cannot cast any spells beyond first level/cantrips.
[4] You gain an imaginary friend. You must share half your treasure with the friend.
[5] Character's face is frozen in fear, rage, despair, or rapturous joy. This causes no loss of charisma, but they always act like this chosen face and cannot order or express things that go against this emotion until a remove curse is used on them.
[6] Your mind is swapped with the nearest living thing, an ally, or the creature that caused this effect. You gain the abilities of that creature and vice versa, but are distinctly not them. If one of you dies, the other will be stuck in the original body. The two creatures must be kept in each others presence for about a year before they swap back to normal, and both must be present if cured with a remove curse spell or mindswapping power.
Sharp Damage (Swords, claws, cutting winds, blade traps)
Probably one of the most common types of damage in a game, so it's going to be the most common peril. All of them except a roll of one require a bandage item or strip of cloth to bind up in addition to their usual effects.
[1] Merely a scratch! Has no effect on its own, but the next time you roll for any Peril result add +1 to the roll just to make it a little worse.
[2] You dodge out of the way at the last second, but the cutting edge finds the nearest and least convenient bit of rope or fabric to sever. Could be the hood hiding your identity, the rope to the chandelier that now comes falling down towards your head, the leather strap keeping your quiver attached to you, or the jungle vine dropping a nest of killer hornets. Whatever it is, it's probably as inconvenient for the cutter as it is for you.
[3] Bleeding Cut. Persistent wound that drips a trail of blood that can be
tracked by blood-seeking creatures. Adding an extra bandage can stop
this effect for one turn, but it resumes afterwards until it fully heals.
[4] Deeper Cut. Lose a bunch of blood in a big pool, making you feel woozy. You roll for disadvantage to climb, cross a balance beam, jump a gap, etc. for the next day or so.
[5] Deepest Cut. You must use one arm to press down on the wound else you will faint from rapid blood loss. You can still fight or run or whatever but one of your arms is disabled the whole time.
[6] Pick your nose, ear, tail, or boob. Whichever one you pick has been cut off almost completely, and is barely hanging on by a thread. It can be saved, but only if you don't get hit by another peril before you can stitch it back on. If you do take another peril, replace it with that body part falling off and being permanently lost.
Tentacle Damage (Kraken, Giant Octopus, Mind Flayers, Lovecraftian monsters, animate rope, giant snakes, animate jungle vines, giant prehensile tail, rubber blob monster, etc.)
Most damage here could be used as bashing or fist; but this is specifically for flexible tentacles, worms, or other such creatures that could grab you, constrict you, etc. Anyone with a Strength modifier of +1 or better can resist some of the worst effects of this and gets to lower the result of their roll by -1
[1] Wraps loosely around a single arm, preventing you from using it or moving away unless you thrash it away with a successful attack against the creature with your other arm or pull away, taking a combat round and forcing you to move.
[2] Slaps the floor next to you or brushes against a leg. If you're in any way slippery, wet, on uneven flooring or not wearing good shoes you fall to the ground. Otherwise, your movement is halved for this round.
[3] Constricts around both lower legs. Arms and mouth are freed, but you must be cut free to be loosed. If the creature is stunned in any way, you can also slip free.
[4] Constricts the neck or head. You can move and attack, but cannot see or cast spells. If you attack, you attack a random target, which can include your allies or the creature grabbing you. All ranged attacks miss while grabbed this way.
[5] Grabs and flings you or bats you aside as a giant fleshy whip. You get thrown back in a random direction against a wall (stunning you one round and denting your armor) or flings you into 1d2 other party members (all are knocked prone for a round and must untangle themselves to do anything)
[6] Full constriction. Arms bound at the sides and legs dangling uselessly; you begin to get squeezed. Each round you lose 1d4 Constitution until you drop to zero, in which case your spine is snapped and you die. No mortal peril for this, you just have to get saved quickly enough.
Toxic Gas Damage (Toxic gas traps, Dragon farts, fat undead, demons, mushroom spores)
If you have a bandana covering your mouth or a free hand to reach up to cover your mouth you only roll a 1d4 on this table, though you can't use that hand for anything else for 1d4 rounds as you cough around the gas. This table is also specifically for toxic gases that could kill or seriously damage people in them; corrosive acid clouds or poison gases from evil swamps are more for the Acid and Poison table respectively.
[1] Cough a lot, not much else. You can't cast spells for the next 1d4 rounds.
[2] Blisters form all over your face, nose, and lips; but you thankfully avoided the worst of it. You lose -1d4 Charisma temporarily until it heals in a few days.
[3] The gas itself makes you cough, but it's also extremely flammable. Any spark from a spell, parrying a weapon, or an open torch flame could cause it to explode (Mortal Peril). Get out of the room or let it air out to avoid this hazard.
[4] Edema. After exposure, your hands and feet swell up and double in size. You can't wear gloves or boots until the body parts are drained, can't pick locks, and can't sneak. You can still fight in melee, but you can't use "fancy" weapons like rapiers or whips with your meaty flesh mitts.
[5] You inhale sharply, eyes going wide, and fall to the floor. You need your mouth forced open and a breath of fresh air in order to recover; which is easier said then done in a dungeon. Spells or a "beak" of perfumed air can help you; otherwise you will eventually open your mouth and breath again but lose -2 Strength permanently from the clenching. Your skin also permanently has a greenish tint.
[6] Cancerous cysts and growth explode all over your arms, legs, and chest. You will need a clean knife, someone with a steady hand, and a way to manage the pain to cut it off before it saps you of your strength and kills you. This process takes a whole night and if you're missing any of those elements you will die before morning either from the toxins or a botched removal surgery.
