General Rules - Cutting Loose (NPC Dismemberment Table)

Summer.

Smothering heatwaves capped by icy sheets of writer’s block, along with the hardware’s lacking heat dissipation all conspire to keep me from mounting the saddle of escapism anew. Here’s some dry hay that I've been slowly chewing through as momentum is regained for meatier posts.

Back when I proposed integrating the Dismemberment Table into the effects for Critical Hits I pretty much bound myself to return and make a usable, table-friendly adaptation of it. Although it was completely deliberate that certain results be lackluster effect-wise, that not every critical hit would instantly default to a dismemberment attempt, the table, in its 3d6 incarnation, stubborn and unwieldily remained very much a Player Character’s tool. High time that this be changed.

Piggies gone to the market

It is emphatically not desirable that a game’s running be bogged down with the minutia of tallying NPC temporary Hps or levels of exhaustion (ideally a solely player-facing mechanic) or of deciding which eye or of how many teeth the enemy’s been relieved of, as these details are simpy not important enough to spend processing power over. Instead, an appropriately abbreviated version of the table ought to be used when dealing with beasties. If an NPC happens to get marked for the greatness of dying in more convoluted ways than normal then, sure enough, the 3d6 version can be dusted off.

As usual with these iterative kind of mechanic proposals, the thought exercise alone proves useful if nothing else, as the necessity to compress effects into both less space and lower mechanic overhead turns up things that can be of value for running a lighter, tidier game. It also gets me to wonder anew about the divide in complexity between player-facing and DM-facing mechanics and the border markers ideally alotted to each.

Design pointers for a smoother dismemberment experience:

- No tracking of anything past Hp and rolled conditions (i.e. no accumulating exhaustion or gaining of tHps).

- Get rid of complex lingering conditions (i.e. anything requiring tracking beyond one simple pass/fail check).

- Reduce the entries' content to the strictly game-relevant, exceptions to be determined should the need ever arise. Rather that load down the descriptors, what is to be thrust into evidence are the combat-relevant effects, it being assumed that despite certain results not being immediately lethal and with the enemy being kept in the fight, once a confrontation winds down and the accompanying veneer of chemical counterweights is washed away most creatures simply won’t resist much longer without medical ministration or clerical miracle-working.

As the dust cleared, it became all too apparent how tautly stretched and distented the table had been for the sake of lowering its lethality for player characters. Reworking this for the unwashed NPC proletariat meant I could afford to be a lot more cavalier with lethal or debilitating effects and the odds thereof.

The Crunchy Bits

- As before, a Critical Hit is needed to trigger a roll on the table below and the Wounded condition means the creature has Disadvantage (or is required to pass a save) on pretty much everything the least bit physical.

- The remaining considerations that can be gleaned from this post are still very much en vogue.

The Table

Adrenaline Rushed version