Healing 5e
Healing for DnD 5e is used essentially as-is. Here is presented a "Lingering Injuries" add-on, inspired by DanDwiki [1]. The reason is to add deadliness to the system.
Medicine
Good article on Medicine uses: https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/50771/is-there-a-real-use-for-the-medicine-skill
Lingering Injuries
If a character receives more damage than half their maximum HP in one turn or they have to roll death saves, the player rolls a D20 and consults this table. Multiple Lingering Injuries of the same type can mean permanent damage.
For every 2 (round down) Lingering Injuries the player already has, reduce 1 from the result.
Note: This is not a "constitution check" or saving throw but effects like "luck" applies.
| Roll | Injury | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| 20 | Surface wound | You gain Bleed-out (Lower your maximum HP by 1 per two levels (min 1)) |
| 19 | Flesh wound | You gain Hemorrhage +1 (Lower your maximum HP by 1 per level +1) |
| 18 | ||
| 17 | Artery wound | You gain Hemorrhage +2 (Lower your maximum HP by 2 per level +2) |
| 16 | ||
| 15 | ||
| 14 | Deep wound | Gain Hemorrhage +3 (Lower your maximum HP by 3 per level +3) |
| 13 | ||
| 12 | ||
| 11 | ||
| 10 | Arm Injury | You lose the ability to use the injured arm. |
| 9 | ||
| 8 | Leg Injury | You lose the ability to use the injured leg. |
| 7 | ||
| 6 | Light Internal Injury | You take 1d2 Con damage & gain +1 Internal Injury lvl. Succeed on Con save DC 8 + (Internal Injury lvl²). Fail = Stunned until the start of your turn. |
| 5 | ||
| 4 | Sight Injury | You are blinded on one eye. |
| 3 | Serious Internal Injury | You take 1d4 Con damage & gain +2 Internal Injury lvl. Succeed on Con save DC 8 + (Internal Injury lvl²). Fail = Stunned until the start of your turn. |
| 2 | Head Injury | You take mental ability damage: 1d4 Int, 1d4 Wis and 1d4 Cha. Succeed at lowest save of Int, Wis or Cha DC 8, or lose your action & reaction until the start of your turn. |
| 1 | Critical Injury | Roll twice on this table: d20 -1. You may add your Con modifier to the roll. |
If any of your physical ability scores ever reach below 1, you die. If any of the mental ones reach below 1, you become unconscious and it's not possible to wake you unless the score becomes more than 0.
Keep track of each Lingering Injury. Each needs to be cleaned before a Long Rest (15 minutes, Medicine DC 10 check) to not risk infection. Keeping a Lingering Injury clean is not the same as attempting to cure it.
Creatures with unusual numbers of limbs or eyes may be affected differently.
Injury Check
Following a Long Rest, make an Injury Check (Con DC 15):
- Failure
- Cleaned injury for 15 min before long rest (Medical DC 10): No effect
- NOT cleaned before long rest: Adds #Infection
- Succeeding on 2 Injury Checks heals the Lingering Injury
- If you receive 1h successful medical care (Medicine DC 15) in conjunction with a Long Rest, you roll with advantage
- Each Lingering Injury is tracked and rolled for separately.
Healing a Lingering Injury
One Lingering Injury is healed by:
- Succeeding on 2 Injury Checks
- Use a 3rd level or higher healing spell on the target
- 20 points of magical healing applied directly to the Lingering Injury (not used to replenish HP loss)
- A Lesser Restoration spell with a #Tooth Component (double with a Greater)
- A Greater Restoration spell (no material component needed)
Hemorrhage
The wound bled you out before it was stopped. You feel weaker. Instead of 2 Injury Checks, you need to succeed in one per Hemorrhage level, reducing the score by 1 for each success.
The Hemorrhage condition comes in levels:
- Drained: Lower your maximum HP by 1 per two levels (min 1).
- Level 1: Lower your maximum HP by 1 per level +1.
- Level 2: Lower your maximum HP by 2 per level +2.
- Level 3: Lower your maximum HP by 3 per level +3.
- Level 4: Lower your maximum HP by 4 per level +4.
- Level 5: Lower your maximum HP by 5 per level +5.
- If you would gain any higher level of hemorrhage you die instead.
Additional hemorrhage injuries increase the Hemorrhage level, updates the hit point total if character level has changed, and applies a level of Exhaustion every time hemorrhage is gained. If a character would die from Exhaustion in this way, instead take 1d4 Con damage.
The Hemorrhage levels can be reduced by:
- 1 by succeeding on one Injury Check
- 1 by a Medicine check (DC 11 + Hemorrhage level), once per long rest. Another character may make the Medicine check.
- 1 by the amount of magical healing needed to "heal" the current Hemorrhage level. (like #Healing Ability Damage)
Injuries to Limb or Sight
If you receive a second injury of the same kind for limbs or sight, it's your choice how it lands on you, whether it deals a second damage to the injured body part or an injury to the second.
If an injured body part recives a second Lingering Injury, it is permanently disabled and probably will require amputation. It requires a Regeneration spell to restore.
Arm Injury
If your arm has a Lingering Injury, you can't use the injured arm for physical actions like lifting, shielding, attacking or crawling. You have disadvantage on Strength checks & saves and on actions that benefits from using that hand (including Grapple or Disarm etc). Your carry capacity is decreased to 1/2.
If your second arm also has a Lingering Injury, you are unable to perform any actions requiring arms. Your carry capacity is decreased to 1/4 due to lack of grip and the pain.
Leg Injury
If your leg has a Lingering Injury, which has the following effects:
- Base speed is decreased by 10ft (to a minimum of 5ft of movement)
- -2 Dodge penalty
- Disadvantage any Strength checks/saves involving the leg
- All strenous activities (like Jump, Tumble or Dashing) risks falling. Succeed on a DC 11 Acrobatics or Athletics check or fall prone.
- If both of your legs have a Lingering Injury, your base speed is 0 and you can't perform any actions that require legs.
Internal Injury
Internal injuries are dangerous. Any time an internal injury is gained, deal the appropriate Con damage (D2/D4), increase the Internal Injury level and discount any previous Injury Check successes.
While suffering an internal injury, at the beginning of every turn make a Con save as below to control the pains in your damaged body. If you fail you become Stunned until the start of your turn.
- DC 9 Con
- DC 12 Con
- DC 17 Con
- DC 20 Con
- DC 20 Con
- You die.
You don't need to roll saves out of combat, but your ability to do things should be limited by the condition.
The Internal Injruy is healed either if the Lingering Injury is healed by Injury Checks or if Internal Injury levels are reduced to 0.
Reducing Internal Injury is done in the same way as #Healing Ability Damage.
When a character loses the Internal Injury condition, she still retains a level of Exhaustion in its place. This doesn't happen if a Greater Restoration spell is used. If a character would have died of Exhaustion this way, they instead receive 1d4 Con damage.
Sight Injury
You are blinded on one side, causing disadvantage on any actions, abilities or saves requiring sight and -5 to passive perception for sight.
After a Long Rest, make a flat check DC17. On a success, you have grow accustomed to the one-sided vision and instead of disadvantage, you instead have a -2 penalty to these things. The effects are replaced by the Blinded condition if you lose sight in all your eyes.
If you receive a second injury of the same kind for limbs or sight, it's your choice how it lands on you, whether it deals a second damage to the injured body part or an injury to the second.
If an injured body part recives a second Lingering Injury, it is permanently disabled. It requires a Regeneration spell to restore.
Head Injury
You take mental ability damage: 1d4 Int, 1d4 Wis and 1d4 Cha.
On your turns, until next Long Rest, succeed on a cognitive save (whichever is lower of Int, Wis or Cha) DC 8, or lose your action and reaction that turn. Don't roll out of combat, but it should affect actions appropriately.
Multiple Head injuries simply apply ability damage. You don't need to make saves out of combat, but your ability to do things is limited by the condition.
Infection
An infection can spread from an untreated Lingering Injury. If you have an Lingering Injury that has not been cleaned (15 minutes cleaning per Lingering Injury; Medicine DC 10) in before a Long Rest, you gain one Infection level for each that you fail.
Non-magic means to regain ability points is prohibited while fighting off an Infection.
Infections don't go away if the Lingering Injury that caused it goes away, and any injuries don't go away if an infection is cured.
If you have any Infection Levels after a Long Rest (after making an Injury Check) you must make an Infection Check (Con DC 10 + Infection level).
- If you succeed: Reduce the Infection level by 1.
- If you fail: Take 1 Str/Dex/Con damage (randomly) and increase the Infection level by 1.
- If you decrease the Infection level to 0, the condition is removed, but not the Lingering Injury.
- If you received successfull Medical care (DC 15) for 1 hour in conjunction with your Long Rest, you can make the check with advantage.
- Even if you haven't reduced the infection level to 0, succeeding a 5th time on an Infection check clears it up.
- On the 4th and further Infection checks, you take 1d2-1 Con damage even on a success and 1d2 on a failure.
Reduce Infection Levels:
- 1 for each day you succeed on an Infection Check (Con DC 10 + Infection level)
- One hour Medical care (Medicine 15) gives advantage to the check
- 1d2 for each Lesser Restoration with a Tooth Component (2d2 with Greater Tooth Component)
- All Infection Levels are healed with Greater Restoration
Healing Ability Damage
- Non-magic means to regain ability points is prohibited while fighting off an #Infection
- 1 on Long Rest if succeeding on a Con check DC 14.
- 1d2 points by spending a whole day recuperating
- 1 point if applied 1h medical care (DC15) in conjunction with a Long Rest
- 1 point per 20 points of magical healing from spells/effects of lower than 3rd
- 1 point per 10 points of magical healing from spells/effects of 3rd or higher
- 1d2 points per Lesser Restoration with a Tooth Component (2d2 with Greater Tooth Component)
- All such damage on one ability score is healed with Greater Restoration
This is primarily meant for ability damage received from a Lingering Injury. Consult your DM if your dability damage is healed in this manner.
Tooth Component
A Tooth Component can be used to enhance spells and requires a pristine tooth from one of the evils of Barovia. A damaged or cavity-filled tooth will not work. As it's extracted, it's immediately apparent if it's a useable tooth or not.
Pristine teeth found on corpse:
- Vampire*
- Vampire spawn*
- Werebear
- Werewolf
- Ghast
- Ghoul
- Dire Wolf
- Strahd Zombie
- Wolf
- Zombie
Of these, a vampiric* tooth also qualifies as a "Greater Tooth Component", which may be a more powerful spell component. One can find a greater component on a lycanthropic** evil if you rolled the max on the die. If less than 4 teeth are extracted from a (full) vampire, any slightly damaged teeth may still be used as a regular Tooth Component.
Lesser Restoration
Lesser Restoration adds Hemorrhage to the list of conditions it can remove. In addition a caster using Lesser Restoration can apply a #Tooth Component as a material component to restore either a Lingering Injury, 1d2 infection levels, 1d2 ability damage, 1d2 Internal Injury levels, or 2d8 points of max HP loss (chosen by you). If a Greater Tooth Component is used, twice that is restored, or two of the normal conditions removed.
Scars
The character will retain scars from their injuries which can only be removed with a greater Restoration spell that specifically targets the scar.
Hitpoint loss
If no other rule applies, suggestion:
Temporary hit point maximum loss is recovered:
- 1d8 points per long rest
- 3d8 points per long rest by spending a whole day recuperating
- 1 point per 8 points of magical healing spells of lower than 3rd level
- 1d8 points for Lesser Restoration
- +1d8 per Tooth Component
- +3d8 per Greater Tooth Component
- All hit point maximum loss is healed with Greater Restoration
Necrophage
Sometimes the magic used to raise the dead can mutate the diseases within the corpses raised. After a creature contracts Necroplague, Symptoms set in after d4 hours. The first symptoms of Necroplague are mild-- but as each day passes, the symptoms become worse. When inflicted with the disease and at the end of each day after, gain one stack of Necroplague. The effects of the stacks are accumulative.
Necrophage Progression
Necroplague Effect Stacks 1 The wound that inflicted the disease refuses to completely heal. They have disadvantage on Constitution Saves & Checks, and their max HP is reduced by 5. 2 Pain grips the creature’s mind. The creature has disadvantage on Wisdom checks and Wisdom saving throws. 3 A raging fever sweeps through the creature’s body. The creature has disadvantage on Strength checks, Strength saving throws, and attack rolls that use Strength. 4 The creature is overcome with shaking. The creature has disadvantage on Dexterity checks, Dexterity saving throws, and attack rolls that use Dexterity. 5 The creature’s mind becomes feverish. The creature has disadvantage on Intelligence checks and Intelligence saving throws, and the creature behaves as if under the effects of the confusion spell during combat. 6 The creature’s flesh decays. The creature has disadvantage on Charisma checks and vulnerability to all damage. 7 The creature perishes, and raises as a Virulent Zombie with 2 other mutations from the Zombie Variant Table.
Curing Necrophage
As a magical disease, Necroplague is more difficult to remove than most diseases. Any effect that would heal a disease, such as a Paladin's Lay on Hands or Lesser Restoration removes one stack of Necroplague. The creature is cured when all stacks are removed. Stacks are not removed upon death.
Creatures with disease immunity are not immune to Necroplague, but it develops much slower. When they would contract a stack of necroplague, roll a d20. On 10+, they do not gain that stack. Delaying the Disease
Effects that suppress magic, such as an antimagic field, halt the progression while subjected to the effect but remove no stacks. Dispel magic can be used to delay the progression for one day, with the DC of the check involved being 10 + the number of stacks the creature already has.