Injury System - Life and Death in Conan Exiles

Life and Death in Conan Exiles - Deadlands Edition
This is prehistory far before modern, or even near ancient civilizations have risen. In this time period, civilizations have risen and fall. Ancient secrets of powerful knowledge are kept, forces are savage, brutal, unforgiving and unrelenting. Horrible forces from realms beyond Hyboria dwell and wait to prey upon humanity. This is a primal, savage time where even the supposed ‘civilized’ groups with their high walls and ornate designs may be as ruthless, wretched, and exacting as those that dwell in the grasses and trees. People die and do not live as long as they do today. Many modern concepts we have do not exist today. Fear based thinking prevails because it shields people from trouble, because it ends danger quickly.

Humanity is food and fuel for greater beings beyond Hyboria, beyond prehistoricpre-history Earth. Horrible things that do not obey the laws of nature as we know, exist and roam in the world and well beyond our world - frequently visiting to toy with, harvest, or partake in our mortal struggle. This is not the present world where man’s predators are stomped out and under control. This is a time where humanity isn’t shit, where wolves and dire wolves will wither and raze settlements, where snakemen warp the minds of ignorant and weak or lazy minded individuals, where fear and acting on it has lead to the successful protection and survival of tribes and civilizations, where magic exists and it is a complete warping of reality that makes a lie of what our minds know and are used to and fills us with doubt as to what can happen to us and around us. This strangeness, this fear, confusion, and suffering takes us further away from the healthy, best paths that benefit both ourselves and everyone around. This corruption of strength, integrity, clarity, generocity, welcoming, compassion, freedom from the enslavement of vice and attachments, poses terrible threats when there exist older, more capable beings that can manipulate us through this corruption.

Conan’s setting is one of brutality, violence, where fear and ‘axe now, ask later’ often result in more protective survival than drawn out diplomacy and room for sneaky dealing and treachery. Combat and aggression, seizing what is to be seized before facing an inevitable, terrible death without gods in the Exiled Lands is commonplace. The Exiled Land may appear pretty, but it should never be mistaken for some idyllic vacation paradise free of conflict, pain, and the horrible forces that lurk beyond humanity’s eye.

Detailed in this document are rules and guidelines for roleplaying injuries and healing, and the magical curse of corruption.

Injuries, Healing, Death
[Intro to health, injuries, healing, medicine, tougher grit of people in this time, set expectations and such]

A PVE/PVP death or loss of RP Dice combat equals 1 level of injury. The levels of injury are on a track downward: normal health, mildly injured, injured, severely injured, dead. When making rolls and adding a penalty or bonus, please put [injured] as the reason, or [healing] if the character has received some attention and does not suffer the full penalty. If a character gets to 4 deaths but survives their Death Check, they might potentially need a week to recover and go up all the injury levels.

For a character to heal injuries, they must do appropriate medicine or constitution checks (detailed later) and beat the DC to Heal to remove 1 Dice Penalty. A character making these checks for themself must factor in their injury penalties - this is why it is easier for someone else to heal you as opposed to you, with your -5 penalty, doing it yourself.

Healing
Healing cuts down the amount of RP scenes it takes to recover. When a character receives healing for multiple RP scenes [no 1 and done hey you’re better now strut out to battle/ho life again] their injury dice penalty gets reduced by 1. A severely injured character who has been successfully treated takes a -4 [healing] penalty, then when they are at -3 they are injured, etc.

Healing: Active and Passive

There are two types of healing for roleplay, passive and active healing. Passive healing is the easily advisable, basic things that anyone can do (and could include in day to day/slice of life or recovery RP). Doing the actions that convey passive healing grants a +1 bonus to healing and recovery efforts [+1 passive healing]. Active healing is the active effort involving a medicine/healing skill check to stabilize (prevent them from going lower in that scene) or improve someone’s condition (reduce their dice penalty and move them up the death/injury track). There is danger in active healing in that an attempt ending in a failed roll can make someone worse. We are not in a time period of instant solutions and quick medical fixes.

Every RP scene, a character has a chance to recover and improve their injury level, symptoms, etc. A recovery check determines if a character’s injury level improves, remains the same, or worsens. Characters get 2 of 3 chances in 1 RP scene to recover, whether this is assisted by another character or not. A sorcerous healer may add 1 more healing attempt to a character.

Moving locations in any method beyond teleportation results in a new RP scene. If no healing is received for a character, they will likely worsen in health and go down the injury track.

. Roll and beat the DC once: a character’s condition remains the same.

. Roll and beat the DC twice; a character’s condition improves.

. No successes: a character’s condition worsens. They receive a -1 penalty and are generally of worse physical and mental health. Receive An Infection.

. A fumble: a character’s condition worsens. Their injuries worsen, wounds reopen, organs rupture, sickness takes greater hold, etc. They fall down to the next level of injury, or die! Too afraid you might kill someone by trying to help them? That’s life here, they’ll probably die if you don’t try. Oops, don’t look at me, the gods must be angry with you!

Passive Healing

How to do passive healing:

A character should drink plenty of fresh fluids, eat foods high in protein or cleansing fruits and vegetables, rest consistently, have fresh air and regular sunlight. If you can honestly say your character has done all of this, they may add a +1 modifier to heal attempts [+1 passive healing] without needing advocate confirmation. There is no major need to provide proof, just be sensible and factor in things like captivity, war, being in constant flight or darkness, etc. Nevermind your character, you should do these things too!

Active Healing

You want to help someone heal and go up the injury track? You want to help stabilize someone so they stop dying?

Basic Medicine (Requires 2+ Medicine/Alchemy skill)

Knowing basic medicine allows a character to stabilize someone from dying and gives them help to pass their Death Check. Without a basic medicine skill or someone with basic medicine skill present to aid in some manner, no matter the roll, a character cannot stabilize a dying character. Only once a day per patient, someone with basic medicine may attempt to improve someone's injury level if they are injured or better.

RP actions to do this: Flushing the wound with clean (fresh running) water, cauterizing wounds skillfully (this can potentially cause more problems), stitching or sealing wounds, then making wound dressings and splinting if need be. Giving proper drink and food.

Advanced Medicine (Requires 5+ skill)

You want to help someone recover from grave injuries faster? Someone with advanced skill can help anyone recover from any state if the caregiver makes a successful roll.

RP Actions to do this: Follow up basic medicine care with poultices of herbs, (aloe, honey, tree barks), proper removal of foreign bodies, stitching of wounds, and possible application of alchemical concoctions.

Sorcerous Healing (Requires Sorcery which requires an Approved Magical Application)
Healing via magic has its benefits - it can add a sorcery skill to a medicine roll as a modifier, and reduce the healing requirement time by 1 scene/day or 2 if a critical success. However, any failures have double the bad consequences and fumbles/critical failures will most likely cause infectious outbreaks, demons to gain entry to possess or physically escape through a person, outright kill one or both characters, or worse if the sorcerer fumbles or fails a corruption check with a bonus DC equal to the amount they failed the last check by. It is very possible for sorcerous inclined to do more harm than help. The greater the potential reward, the more dire the cost and the consequences.

Healing Rooms (Sanitary rooms set aside for healing purposes.)  They contain access to clean water, surgical tools, medicinal items, bandages, and splints. These rooms give a +5 to medicine checks performed by healers within the room.

Poisons, Infections, and Diseases
[Work in Progress, More to come soon]

''Being injured leads to infections and diseases that make survival much harder, and in the case of diseases, may be permanent as well as potentially spread to others. If a character has an infectious disease, there is no consenting out of receiving it.  If you satisfy the criteria to receive it and fail a roll, your character gets diseased and must deal with the consequences just as if a PVE mob hit you and you took HP damage. To verify if a character is diseased if this is called into question, the diseased character can request the advocate team send a confirmation to the recipient.''

''Poison and diseases will cause a character to not only be taken down the injury track, but may target attributes and give them dice penalties. Curses are supernatural diseases that generally originate from sorcery, and may cause penalties to attributes or skills, or very strange circumstantial penalties to a character.''

''Poison table to follow. General guideline is character must make a constitution roll (with any penalties such as injury state, being shaken or corrupted) vs the poison DC. If they succeed the full amount of times they are immune from that specific source of infection for one scene. If they fail, they take the penalties of the poison or disease.''

[link tables here]

Name: The type of poison or a listing for a general category

Poison attacks: you must succeed against this many consecutive rolls to be safe/temporarily immune.

''DC: Score to roll constitution check against and receive penalties upon failing. ''

''Damages: The attribute or skill that takes penalties until cured. This can also be health, in which case the number penalty functions like gameplay deaths where 1 injury = mildly injured at -1, -3 is 2 deaths at injuried, -5 penalty is severely injured, and -6 is critical stage/death. A poison with a penalty of 5 would take someone to severely injured upon infection. This may come with a time component, such as -1 injury per scene, -3 injury per day, etc''

Remedy: RP’d item and its representative gameplay item, and actions that must be acquired and completed to stop the effects and remove the attribute/skill penalty

Type: Disease, Poison, Supernatural?

[Insert Setna disease table]

Death and the Afterwards
When you die, the bracelet may latch onto someone’s essence, someone’s willpower that remains strong enough to keep from being consumed by the magic of the bracelet, or lost to the corruption pervading the exiled lands. No one here sees their gods, sees valhalla, or received any final rest. They are pulled apart by the bracelet or wither away, where their memories are left with their bones that quite likely will rise up, given the entire land is bathed in corruption. Few, by chance, or perhaps strange circumstances, may find themselves at a strange crossroads upon death, rather than just awaking, ‘reborn’ somewhere in the exiled lands with mental/emotional parts missing and diminished. When most people, including npcs die, that’s it, they are dead. They fuel the magic of the bracelets, and possibly the land of the dead.

When one is strong enough to return from death, they return missing something - mentally or emotionally (more than just some memories). A person essentially sacrifices some critical element of them to the bracelet in order to return to life. It will take without mercy, whether it is an entire type of memory, a skill such as alchemy or the ability to use one’s left arm for combat, singing or vision, the ability to smell and taste nice things, etc. It could do them some good in ways such as making them more focused as other parts of their personalities, tendencies and traits, or perhaps skillsets entirely fall away. It could do them some harm as those skills could prevent them from surviving or relating to others. Either way, when a character dies and returns, whatever is sacrificed to return - is a meaningful sacrifice. If your character is not inconvenienced and disrupted by the loss here and there, another loss may be added on, or, slow setting corruption, madness.

No one returns just fine - no one has ‘seen it all’ or ‘been there before’. If death is some trivial thing to your character and environment, they are best off dead because the grasp of the sheer horror, the demonic and extraterrestrial blights and deities that feast upon or harvest humanity is far more common and overwhelming in this time - and rarely is a totally nonchalant and fearless, unaffected character fun for others to work with. The horrors from beyond that wait to prey on humanity is what awaits people, whether they are corrupted or not.

So how does one return and what are they like after dying?

The bracelet will pretty much just latch onto the strongest/most pronounced parts of someone - whether its skills, desires, traits - while other qualities just fade away. It is much like becoming a ghost -  they become single minded, less well rounded, more two dimensional, and again, far more obsessed with whatever piece of purpose they have. Individuals who are indecisive, and more so without purpose, die and do not return. Those who die again and again wither until they become wights, mere bones, or in the case of corrupted individuals, they are possessed by demons and forfeit any semblance of control or sanity (become a nameless NPC)

The skeletons, the undead you see in this land? They were once all exiles.

Corruption in Conan - Deadlands Edition
Almost all characters in the Hyborian Age are capable of being corrupted if they face sufficiently severe challenges to their integrity. If one consistently jeopardizes the wellbeing of others for the promotion of their own power, wealth, or status, they are more likely to stumble into the corruption of this world. Many people begin with no integrity whatsoever, and seem to seek out self-corruption as a form of fuel, entertainment, validation of the weakness, the suffering, of demons from beyond. Even those with stringent codes of honour may fall from their principled stance, usually without any hope of regaining it. This is because the worldview portrayed in the Conan stories is essentially bleak. There are no cosmic forces for ‘Good’. Even the supposedly good gods, such as Mitra, are few and far between. The only good is that which is to be found in a few human beings of high moral standing, though even they are far scarcer than the self-serving or actively evil humans who make up the majority of ordinary people and great heroes and villains alike.

On the other hand, ‘Evil’ exists in a very real and concrete manner. Dark forces are always afoot. The foul sorcerous knowledge of evil priests and the vile demons they conjure up are far more powerful than any magics or defensive prayers to which their supposedly ‘Good’ counterparts might have access to. These ‘good’ magics break the same laws of mortal, natural life and attract the same attention from the demons from beyond. Many folk, who might otherwise be moral, take the first steps on the road to damnation when they realise that even if they behave virtuously, there is no paradise in the next life, no guarantee of salvation; they might as well take what they can here and now. In the exiled lands, this is even worse - terrible magics bind spirits and prevent them from being released to their gods, to their afterlifes - it is truly a terrible place.

Corruption is a more serious problem for magicians and other scholars than for most characters. Their research typically causes them to make more saving throws against corruption than most adventurers; moreover, even those who successfully avoid being corrupted have a tendency to grow madder and madder as they gain more and more unnatural knowledge. For the amoral sorcerer, with some insight into just how powerful and dangerous are the forces aligned against humanity, there is a stark choice between simply giving in to those forces and giving in to despair or madness at the recognition that those forces will someday win.

Almost every high-level sorcerer is likely to be either corrupt or mad, at least to some degree.

What is corruption?
Corruption is effectively an enduring curse of semi-permanent sorcery.

What does corruption do to a person?
Corruption steadily saps away at one’s health and sanity, eventually causing them to succumb to sickness and die, or to despair of their emotional state and having lost their will to thrive they get themselves killed.

What does corruption -feel- like?
Corruption is a terrifying lie that enslaves the senses. Corruption is the cacophony of voices that whisper in the darkness, the shadows that creep at the corner of your vision. To your tongue it tastes of bile and decay, and to your nose it is an acrid smoke that steals the breath from your lungs. To touch corruption is to feel every hair on your body stand on its end, and to feel as though you are being crushed by an invisible weight of dread and anxiety that you cannot move out from under. It is the dread that haunts your sleepless nights and the fatigue that hunts you throughout the day.

How do you get corrupted?
One can become corrupted from arcane attacks, from enchanted (accursed) relics, artefacts, or weapons, staying in an area that has become corrupted, or through peaceful contact with demons or very powerful sorcerers.

How long do these things take or last in RP time, considering in RP scenes or RL weeks?

Becoming corrupted is semi-permanent, and with few exceptions will last indefinitely for the life of your character. During admin/advocate/actor overseen events if you are trafficking with demons, travelling in close proximity with extremely corrupt sorcerers, or handling accursed artefacts, relics, or weapons the DM may call for you to make a willpower saving throw to determine whether or not you have become corrupted by its accursed influence.

What are the risks of gaining corruption?
As you become more corrupted the risk to your character becomes more severe. Insanities and illnesses apply upward toward your permanent demise. During a scene, when you have died 3 times in PvE or PvP, or are currently at the level of “severely injured”, the next time you die you must roll a willpower save minus your corruption vs DC 15. If you fail this roll your character dies)

Mechanics of Corruption
Corruption offers no benefits. Corruption makes socializing and relating, focus and thinking, and moving around and enduring more difficult. It warps someone physically and mentally the more corrupt they are. This is not an incentive to run out and get a physical and spiritual plague for the sake of getting cool glowing eyes, horns, and an easy excuse to be inconsistent and crazy. If someone has glowing eyes, horns, claws, or other strange and inhuman effects - they have done Some Bad Shit that involve magical forces breaking the laws of nature and reality. There is no ‘oops I was chosen by my god and now I have cool white eyeballs and ice wings’. If someone’s eyes are glowing, they speak and wisps of fire come out their mouth instead of puffs of air, or snakes get mesmerized by their gaze - they meddled with or descended from something otherworldly, demonic, and ultimately they thrive off of mortal sacrifice and suffering in some way or another. Innocent people have been murdered, tortured, and made to suffer when demonic traits are visible.

Effects of Corruption
Corruption Level 1-2 or “trace corruption”

Troubled. 0 dice roll penalty. The character may have occasional nightmares in which he commits atrocious acts, or may begin to develop a drinking problem or a taste for some lotus-derived drug. Often this is not so much a direct effect of the corruption, as a means of attempting to control it or avoid thinking about it. This can be reduced through rare and likely magical means in roleplay - reducing or curing this is unavailable to players through mundane gameplay and items.rare methods known only to esoteric masters.

Corruption Levels 3-4 or “mild corruption”

Disturbed. -1 dice roll penalty. The character begins to question the value of acting correctly or ethically, feeling pessimistic about the future. He is likely to toy with the idea that demons or evil gods would be better to worship than the established religions, feeling that at least evil is honest in its selfishness and more effective at accomplishing goals. Keeping to a Code of Honour will be very difficult at this point.

Corruption Levels 5-6 or “moderate corruption”

Detached. -2 dice roll penalty. The character no longer cares about others’ feelings or comfort, seeing them as no more than tools to be used in his personal pursuit of pleasure, power, knowledge or whatever else it is that motivates him. The thought of a Code of Honour, if he ever had one, is quite ridiculous to him. Interpersonal relations tend to fall apart or become far more manipulative and obsession or goal feeding. These characters will do whatever they can to attain their goals and further their agendas, only sparing others of mercy and cruelty because doing so may inconvenience them too greatly. It is essentially functional sociopathy.

''Corruption levels beyond 6 will require discussion with an administrator and a magic application. We still reserve the right to reject magic applications as necessary, even if they are a result of corruption.''

Corruption Saves
Any time a character comes into contact with a demon, an evil god, or an unusually powerful and corrupt sorcerer, if the character is not actively attacking them or fleeing from them in terror, they must make a corruption saving throw. This is essentially a Willpower saving throw.

Are you facing a corrupt being? Did someone just cast a strong magical spell? Did you encounter a twisted and corrupted item or location? This is when you make a Corruption Check.

Corruption Check:

Make a willpower roll. If your character has corruption points, subtract that amount from the willpower roll (this is a situational penalty, called a circumstance penalty). Once you start on the steady slope towards corruption, it is more and more difficult to stop.

Your adjusted roll goes against the being/magic’s Sorcery Attack roll. If you beat the roll, you are not corrupted. If you lose the corruption check, you may either take a point of corruption, or instead take an insanity. You should inform the storyteller with [corruption gain] or [take an insanity]. The insanities will be chosen from a list, tailored somewhat to your character, and not be convenient to your character but may be entertaining, but ultimately are expected to be played out. Characters that take no losses are rarely any fun to play with.

Failure of a corruption check causes a person to become shaken (-2 penalty on All rolls) for 1d6 rounds (or for 1 roleplay scene if it is not a scene of intense activity such as combat or multiple skill checks). The character also gains a permanent, minor insanity as agreed by the player and Games Master from the list below, or from elsewhere if desired. A sorcerer who already has a minor insanity and fails a second insanity saving throw becomes shaken once more, this time for 3d6 rounds (or for three scenes). He also gains a permanent major insanity, as agreed by the player and Games Master from the list below. It is always possible to opt to fail the save against Corruption, if one would prefer to become corrupted rather than mad.

Repeat Corruption Checks

A character who successfully saves against corruption usually does not need to make another Corruption saving throw due to the presence of the same creature or in the same area in a roleplays scene. However, if he has close, peaceful contact with the creature, the Games Master may call for another corruption saving throw at their discretion.

If any sudden uses of corruption and magic are used though, they may have to make another corruption save.

Corrupted Artefacts

Certain magical artefacts, cursed treasures and sorcerous practices can also force corruption saving throws. If the artefact or treasure in question is cursed or magically tainted in any way, a Corruption Save must be made. Any character who fails will become obsessed with that treasure, artefact, or area on a more long-term basis, spending at least the next hour concerned only with securing, counting, or looking at the treasure, as appropriate. While in this state he/she is at a -2 circumstance penalty to all attack rolls and skill checks other than Appraise checks. After an hour, he/she may attempt another save as before, success indicating that he shakes off the effects.

Insanities Table
If someone must take an insanity, note whether it is a minor or major insanity, and then roll a d20 and just from the list below.

If an insanity is created or chosen that is unlikely to come up in RP or never does in practice, a new one should be added on rather than replace the old.

Recovering from Insanity
A character who does not practice any sorcery or have contact with Corrupting influences for three months may make a Will saving throw (DC 15 for minor insanity, DC 20 for major insanity) at the end of that time to completely recover from his insanity.

Recovering from Corruption
Nice try. You don’t recover from corruption (excluding trace corruption). It just keeps increasing until you forfeit your soul to some demon of the outer void or lose your sanity completely and get yourself killed. Moreover, corruption is a blight upon your health. Sooner or later the inability to sleep that accompanies the dark dreams and nightmares of despair, and the drugs and alcohol consumed in an effort to self medicate the effects will take their toll on your body and weaken you physically, emotionally, and psychologically. That is the price you pay for trafficking with demons, or repeated and continued exposure to corrupt places and things.

The End Result of Corruption and Issue Resolution with Corrupt Characters
If the Player who plays the character is unwilling to roleplay these kinds of changes, the Games Master should consider taking over the character as a Non-Player Character or the player should strongly consider killing off this character.

Stat and Skill Ratings

Skills are a way to measure what a character is capable of at any given moment. To test someone’s skill and whether they succeed or fail, and potentially how well they succeed or how heavily they fail at an action attempt, we roll dice and add or subtract numbers from the skill rating.

The dice represents all the factors that take too much to account for, or are just impossible to account for - like maybe a floor was wet or the character had a sudden thought of remembering they left luggage on a boat about to sail away as they were trying to seal some social deal, or perhaps it was windy and the smell of rotten fish blew by during someone’s riverside performance making it have less of an impact than it would otherwise.

Below are what the values of skill ratings represent in a general sense. They follow the format of the number of a skill rating, and a general sense of how competent that person is or where they might stand in society with that sort of skill.

[Skill Rating of 0 to 8 using the Roleplay mod by Stack]

0 is no knowledge, at best you can hope to recall something you’ve seen. For INT based skills you will have anywhere from a -2 to a -10 modifier. A grisled barbarian is not going to magically pull off a surgery on someone and keep their organs in place because they rolled high on someone severely injured. Socially, someone cannot read social cues whatsoever or articulate their thoughts with any consistent hope. Physically they are sufficient enough for basic activity, but anything strenuous will probably tire them out or be beyond their reach. '''Untrained/incapable. Weak or ignorant.'''

5 is capable, familiar, you know the basics of the skill, have a functional sense and enough foundation to build on but are otherwise entirely unremarkable. Average in trade or capability

9 is very skilled, someone who is probably locally known for their adeptness at the skill or trait. They can council and train others effectively, don’t often miss the simple details and basics, but they still have room to improve if they can find the time to obsessively dedicate to. Skilled professional.

14 is the peak of what humans can manage before truly supernatural influences come into play. Some would casually remark that someone at this level of mastery is already beyond human, as they are several times more skilled than the average person. A person with a skill this high or slightly higher has probably done little else in life - much of their time and activity has gone to mastering this area, to the extent that they are probably deficient in many other areas and not likely to be wholly independent. Legendary/masterful.

Definitions

Roleplay Scene: A roleplay scene is roleplaying that takes place in an area that has a consistent theme or focus of activity. It could be a character’s entry and time in a bar, an adventure out on a hunt as well as another scene afterwards of finding an enemy and encountering them. Its very difficult to attach real-life time values to what a roleplay scene counts as, but generally we try to aim for a RP scene to equal roughly one real life hour of roleplaying, even if the scene itself takes place over the course of a few in-story minutes.

Generally multiple roleplay scenes are separated by scenes where characters have the opportunity to rest.

Keep in mind that intense scenes such as action sequences between people may take a long time to play out, but in the story itself, those emotes and writing are happening in seconds.

Willpower:

Sorcery:

Circumstance Penalty: