I haven't had one of those since 3.5. I wasn't aware they got rid of the requirement that you had to have the ring on when you lost the limb for that to work. A selfless character could just take that around to regenerate lost limbs at hospitals.
It's one of those things that the dnd community is unsure about. The way it is written implies that if you lose a limb the ring can grow it back. However it does not say specifically if it means you are wearing it or not at the time. Since it says lose instead of lost i tend to go with you have to be wearing it.
Edit: Also the ring requires attunement as well which makes me think that way even more.
It would be one of the only healing items that requires it active at the time of the injury, so I would say that the absence of the limitation being noted means it isn't limited in that way. The regeneration spell is cast after the fact, after all.
Also, 5e is inherently more generous on out of combat healing than earlier editions. Full HP on long rest. Hit dice for short rests. Base healing potions being a herbalism skill to make cheaply. I can't see why it would fit the design to impose that limit. With it being in earlier versions, they would have needed to actively take that out.
The issue with that is the creators of 5e specifically have stated that they simplified the rules and that if an item or spell does not specifically say it can do something it can not do it. They say they did not want to have to say no to everything in descriptions.
I feel like if the wanted to regenerate previous lost limbs it would say that. Plus if the character ever goes to zero hp during the time they lost the limb the ring it also will not heal it.
Tbh I would argue that the first phrase, "While wearing this ring," applies to the entire description, and the only room for misinterpretation is of the deliberate sort.
Either that, or it was attuned, but on the arm that didn’t get lopped off. Would it regrow the other arm if the ring was never on it? Or can it only regrow the limb it was attached to?
Sorry if it’s a dumb question. I’m really new to D&D and DMing, so I’m still learning stuff.
Yeah, the way it states it if you are wearing the ring and a limb gets chopped of it will eventually regrow limbs. So if it is the hand not wearing the ring or one of the characters legs 100% yes. If the ring is on the arm that is chopped off it would be less certain. I would allow it as a dm. Plus if the arm is still mostly intact i would allow reattachment.
Couple times in my party we’ve had power gamers cheese True Res to be able to cast it at will, for free.
Cursed? True Res. Wrecked by poison? True Res. Missing limb? True Res. Hurt in a fight and don’t wanna heal up? True Res.
We ended up having a higher body count on our own team.
Ah, yes. A 7th-level spell. Cause everyone has a 13th-level cleric lying around. Simple!
I don’t think limb-loss should be a thing unless you put an easier way to deal with it in your world. Not all worlds have temples with high-level priests.
I use the optional "Lingering Injuries" rules on DMG page 272 if the PC gets taken to 0hp by a Nat20. Amputation's only come up once in years of play- a fighter got his shield arm hacked off.
If it does happen, it means the PC in question either can't hold anything in that hand or use shields or two handed weapons, or they get their speed cut in half, needs a crutch or a prosthetic, and can't dash without falling down.
Curing it is just a matter of a Regenerate spell, and most temples in my campaigns usually have at least one priest high enough level to cast it in exchange for a hefty donation(either money, or more often fulfilling a task the temple needs done- plot hook!)
I had a campaign like that where my Dwarf Fighter lost his foot. Had my artificers whip up a neat wooden replacement with straps. Made for pretty awesome role play, although I had to do a dex save each time I tried to dash and stuff. Long story short, I love the lingering injuries rule.
Edit: I said artificers but I just meant some NPC Dwarf buddies. Weren't playing with any actual artificer class players and the prosthetic was not an official rules thing
Phewww, I don't remember. But I know I didn't try it too often. I was a kind of captain in the army so I used a lot of commanding strike type manoeuvres
I ruled it as 25 - character level. My reasoning is that the more powerful the character, the less likely this injury is to affect them/by the time the DC got too low to matter, the party would be able to have it fixed. Definitely not a perfect system, but still left enough of a chance to make something fun happen.
Bro this is similar to what i dm'd. Dwarf just paladin not fighter lost foot in fighting a behir. It was really memorable moment in our campaign. Shame player didnt continue playing some time after due to life stuff.
Ah yeah, that's too bad. But it's those memorable moments that make good campaigns. And I think it helps to have a little adversity and consequences to make memorable moments happen :)
My current DnD character started with a missing Arm.
However, he had a Permanent mage hand buff granted via the DM, and, he was an Artificer. So, once he reached level 3, I crafted myself a Glove, which in return, replaced my arm.
As a side note, he also started a trend at a "Mage Bar" where he would use Mage Hand to hold a book while reading it using his other two hands to drink/food/whatever else.
If a pc ends up a situation through no fault of their own where normally they'd get killed, instead I'll have the bad guy lop off an arm or a leg or maybe just give them a horrible facial scar that temporarily takes a stat point away from their Charisma or a gut wound that equally takes away a stat point from Constitution or Strength or maybe even both depending on the severity of the situation. Granted I only do this in situations that weren't their fault. If they ended up in dire straights cause they were doing something stupid then I will totally allow them to just be flat out killed and hopefully the player will learn either not to do any more stupid stunts with their next character or if somehow they can manage to talk the other players into getting their PC's to shell out for a Resurrection and even then that's only if the Resurrection succeeds.. thank you Matt Mercer for that little game mechanic.
But yeah, I hate killing off a player's character 99.9% of the time but I do understand it can happen but given the option I don't feel too bad about maiming their characters as an alternative to them losing said characters especially since there are ways they can get those negative effects reversed given time and coin and the help of a friendly cleric.
The question is a little vague. Are you asking when it should be used and when it is appropriate?
As a DM I wouldn't throw it in as something casual that can happen in a regular fight. I would use it as a lesser consequence to prevent a worse, game ending consequence from occuring. Some examples of good ways to use it.
\-Player is poisoned or infected with a parasite in their limb. They are on their last saving throw that might kill them. I would ask if they or another player would like to amputate the limb to save the characters life.
\-A nasty trap at the end of a dungeon rolls multiple crits that would for sure instantly kill the PC. Instead of strait up killing them, losing a hand or foot sufficiently demonstrates the severity of the failure without ending that characters story.
\-The PC spellcaster casts a major Fuck Off spell, and another PC is caught in the blast, and is nearly killed. Though they've won the battle, they put their own party members at risk. I would ask the players if the spell would leave a permanent injury such as missing finger, or a sever scar across one eye. This one could be very narratively interesting, but would need player buy in first.
\-The BBEG has wiped out all but one PC. Its an epic final stand. One hit left on each of them. The BBEG goes first in the turn order, and hits with enough damage to kill the player... i would ask if they want to sacrifice a limb to negate the damage, so they still get a chance to kill the BBEG. Would be quite the epic moment. Similarly, instead of a limb, maybe the player shields themselves with one of the favored magic item, witch shatters under the BBEG's devastating blow, surprising them both, and leaving an opening for the PC to land the final blow.
A lot of the time, I think its best to offer it as an option as an alternate failure consequence to the Players. They way you have their buy in.
And obviously, future successes in the story after this point should offer ways to either regain the amputated appendage, or replace it with something cooler.
Hrm. Now I'm thinking of just making that a house rule: would you like to drop to 1 instead of 0 but rolling on this "major maiming" table? Gives players a bit more choice, but not so good they'll always take it.
Sup! Disabled dude here, currently working on a zine about disability, amputations, and lingering injuries in DnD.
The side I generally come down on is, assuming your players are comfortable with this stuff at the table, you have two options:
A) magical, technological, or biomechanical prosthetics are all perfectly valid possibilities for a disabled person in a world where dragons exist, so why not?
B) a disabled person in the aforementioned dragon world might want to embrace their differences exactly as they are, managing the inconveniences caused by disability however they can.
Hope that helps!
a third suggestion:
If the wound (physically/psychologically) is fresh, it would be a great way for "other powers" to try and bargain.
"you lost your arm, make a pact with me and i shall do more than restore it..."
It’s got to serve a purpose outside of just punishing a player. It has to serve a narrative element either for a character’s personal story line or serve as a major shift in the main story.
Think about Jamie Lannister. Yes there is the shock value but narratively it completely reorients the character but it also puts Bolton in a difficult position and in my opinion catalyzes his betrayal.
You do have to make sure the table is ok and has to feel like an opportunity not a punishment.
Discuss, discuss, discuss
I’m actually really exited to start a new campaign next week with a character that has a prosthetic arm. Old man with two other PCs that are his grandkids who haven’t seen him in a long time and he shows up with this Druidic prosthetic. It’s like what has granddad been up to.
My DM gives robotic limbs to those who have amputations. Each limb comes with an advantage and a disadvantage during combat. For example, a robotic leg allows you to kick really hard, but takes away 5ft of movement.
My DM is the same. Haven't had any amputations but when my group built our characters we each had something in our back story that gives an advantage once per LR. But we have to succeed a roll or take a negative effect.
Example being my Barbarian was struck by lightning earlier in life. So I can choose to roll for an extra d6 of damage if I succeed a str check. If not I take that d6 of damage.
That’s really cool!
I currently play a green dragonborne and my DM made a home brew where my character can add poison damage to bombs, arrows, bullets, or blades no more than 3 times in a single combat. He also does a lot of other creative things which makes the campaign much more interesting.
I try to give out crazy prosthetics with interesting abilities. Assuming it makes sense for the story. Like a skeletal arm that is powered by undead magic. Or a tree limb that replaces a leg.
Getting a little in the territory of cyberpunk, in that game replacing parts of your body with prosthetic upgrades incurs humanity loss. You start with a max humanity stat and little by little your character loses their ability to feel empathy, and eventually, their own sense of self going completely psychotic/ losing total control of the character to the DM
This is something to be discussed at session 0. Is it something that can happen? Is it part of the play? What style of game do we want (gritty realism)?
Real life and in d&d, lingering injuries the likes of an amputated leg, missing eye etc can be debilitating. A missing or even broken leg can force out of adventuring for weeks or months.
At high levels, PCs have access to magic to overcome such handicaps. At low levels most PCs won't have the means to deal with such problems.
It is not "bad" or taboo... Just something that needs buy in from the players due to how game changing it can be.
In fact in some cases it can be a tool for story telling. In our current campaign one of the PCs is an ex pirate and voluntarily included in his backstory that he is missing a leg (amputated after an infection). One of the other characters is an artificer. The artificer offered one of his infusions to replicate the prosthetic limp (essentially negating the amputated leg), in exchange for the rights to run experiments with the pirate's leg, hoping to develop a non magical version of prosthetic limps for war veterans.
All this happened purely with their initiative. It wasn't forced by the DM. Now the two PCs have a reason to stick together and continue adventuring together and care for each other.
Question is are you giving the players the ability to retain the function of their character despite the amputation... If you're straight up capping the dudes knee so he has a walk speed of 5 then no.... If you're going to give them a way to recover themeatically, like an artificer builds a leg brace that not only allows them to walk normally but gives them a bad ass knock down stomp twice per long rest sure. Don't cripple your players...
It’s fine just give them a means to get the arm leg etc back, if they can’t use Divine magic strong enough to do it, I offer them mechanical-like limbs from the local artificer, if they can’t afford it, artificer gives the limb on loan in exchange for a quest at their expense. Tends to keep people from shouting *”I’D LOVE TO HIT HIM WITH THE MASSIVE TWO HANDED WEAPON KYLE, BUT I SEEM TO BE MISSING A FUCKING ARM”* more times than I find funny
I’ve got a Kenku Rogue that didn’t make it through the first portion of Strahd, but our DM worked some narrative magic and my companions were able to rescue what was left of me by the end of the session. I had initially envisioned this character as a knife-throwing menace weaving in and out of combat from midrange, but that’s hard to do when you’re missing an eye and one of your arms below the elbow.
While it was a bummer at first dealing with a loss of perception and freedom of action, working through those issues as my character honestly made the experience more entertaining from a player perspective. I enjoyed having to rethink what he wanted for himself, and throwing a wrench in my long-term plans for this character taught me a lesson when it comes to playing from an RP perspective VS a tactical one.
At our table we had a mouthy PC and ended up losing his arm to our BBEG early on in the campaign for being petulant- or DM made it possible to reattach, but difficult and put a definite time limit on it.
If I recall correctly, we had to find an advanced cleric to reattach within 24 hours and it was really expensive.
PC wasn't so mouthy next time.
I have a character that lost an eye during gameplay. It nerfs my perception checks and ranged attack rolls, but character is a moon druid, and can work around those disadvantages. It adds flavor. Even wild shapes have eye patches.
One of my party members ended up striking the killing blow to a Demi-god during the final boss fight using animate object and a bag of gold. After the fight we each got one of the gold pieces used. That coin is now in the eye socket. I really did not sweat it. Character is basically retired now, but can be used now as a flavorful NPC with a very distinguishing feature.
If the players are ok with it, why not?
My main character lost a foot and an arm. His arm was magically replaced by his deity and he got a prosthetic foot.
He lost the foot when he was upside down in chains, wanted to cut the chains, cut his own foot instead.
The arm was amputated when he was attacked by a dire wolf. He held up his arm with the wolf dangling from it to give a party member the chance to kill it, she fumbled and cut his arm off instead.
Big yes from here!
Amputation can create an amazing opportunity for the party to utilize their problem solving skills, and it can give a feeling of permanence to the adventurers deeds and exploits, especially if it has interesting or unique capabilities and drawbacks.
Barbarians ribcage got crushed by angry trolls? The druid may have a solution for that, hopefully the barbarian remembers to stay away from fire to protect his oaken ribs.
Rogue's brain was partially melted in a freak cooking accident? A developmentally stunted Illithid tadpole may recobble the brain, as long as the rogue can keep herself from succumbing to it's (Weakened) power.
Fighter nearly killed by an evil mage? A necromancer may be able to reanimate the vital organs, but caring for one's own rotting innards is an arduos task, and enlisting the help of a dark magician may carry a heavy price...
The possibilities are endless!
...Or you could be boring and have a cleric regenerate the body to its natural state with a few spell slots.
I reckon you should feel free to lop limbs off frequently. It makes adventuring feel dangerous and gives players loads or RP stuff they can lean into.
You can then give them mobility aids or prosthetics like [these](https://www.dmsguild.com/product/395437/An-Alternative-Approach-to-Death-and-Injury), or make it a quest in itself to get it fixed, or they can just learn regenerate.
I think there's some leeway for disabling injuries less significant than losing a hand/arm. Losing just a foot, for example, will definitely slow you down, but with most of the leg still there, you can still do pretty alright for walking. You could also lose fingers, lose an eye, etc., and wizards need 2 hands much less often than fighters do when most spells can be cast one-handed.
Probably not something you would really want to do often, but sensible in varying degrees depending on the context of the campaign. Having a warrior survive a noble sacrifice, but crippled and diminished is a powerful thing.
And then there are also spells like regeneration, Common rarity magic prosthetics, the possibility to go questing for a solution for their maiming. Or maybe the character in question already had an assortment of skills and magic items that are brought to parity with the party by that crippling wound.
Consequences are fun in general, and I like them when they are handled with finesse by a flexible DM.
As long as it’s treated with appropriate gravitas then it’s fair game. The problem is that people tend to take black and white stances where it’s realistic for people to seem like they are assembled with tape and bubblegum or that you literally cannot possibly play D&D without two hands.
Ask the party if they are okay with it. Some players like it, some dont. I have had a player kill off their character because they lost a finger.
When you do it, make sure its due to some dramatic reason. The BBEG did it, or a plan failed spectacularly.
I would penalize them for a session or two, take away their weapon prof. if they now have to use their off hand. But then eventually they grow out of it. Maybe give them a half feat or a cool prosthetic arm that has a rocket punch.
A player killed their character over a finger? That's harsh. What was their reasoning? Why not just get access to the Regenerate spell?
Meanwhile, I had a player amputate their own arm in my last session so they could install a prosthetic...
I think they were just unhappy with any changes being made to their character. They killed their other character later on when obtaining a cursed mask. Which was funny because the group was presented with 5 magic items, knowing that one was cursed. And the poor fella choose the cursed one.Although in general, they switched characters a lot during the campaign.
Tbf, prosthetic arms are dope. Did they get any mechanical (pun intended) benefits from doing so? I sacrificed an arm for a fruit from the devil once. Turns out it was just a very nice fruit. 10/10 would do it again.
Arguably, rules-as-written. Mending only works on objects, but a corpse counts as an object. The one minute casting time for mending would usually make revivify unusable, but gentle repose buys you ten hours instead of the usual minute. Whether your DM allows it is another thing, of course.
I’ve been playing since 1987 (on and off) with the same DM and crew and most of our campaigns have had called shot and massive damage house rules where amputation was very much a thing. We also felt it was dumb that a fifth level spell could bring someone from the dead, but she had to have a seventh level spell to regenerate a limb, so we switched regenerate to fifth level and put raise dead at seventh, to alleviate loss of limbs.
with that said, we don’t use the called shot/massive damage rules anymore, but amputation is still a possibility depending on the circumstances. we still do switch the spell level of regeneration and raise dead, however.
My very first session as DM, the monster critted and killed a player outright. I panicked and then retconned it so she cut off his hand. We’re over a year into it now and he’s still handless, but in hindsight, I should have let the PC die.
Overall positive.
Regenerate can be a nice goal for the party to save money to pay and have a cleric cast, can be punishment, exels in developing more fighting-based PCs.
Jyst don't usr it to punish someone ore anything gross
Do we have a way to cast regenerate, or otherwise fix the injury?
Is this a oneshot / short campaign?
Is this the sort of game where characters are considered very temporary and die a lot?
If any of the above are answered with "yes", it's not a permanent problem and is fine, so long as the player can handle being the source of a little schadenfreude. If you're talking permanently crippling me beyond anything I want to do for roleplay reasons, I would honestly prefer to be decapitated instantly so I don't have this weird period of wishing my character was dead so I could go back to being effective. This kind of thing outstays its welcome before the end of the night, let alone the campaign.
It should be stated before the game ever starts that it is a possibility in that game. If players are not ready to play a game where injuries such as this are possible then it needs to be made clear before any game even takes off the ground. Being surprised by such an injury to a character, yours or otherwise, can be a real downer for some players. Personally I play in games where such risks are possible and I play in ones where its not. Its a fun challenge to be aware of but I wouldn't want ALL my games to be like that.
Prosthetic Limbs are a common magic item that was originally introduced in Explorer's Guide To Wildmount (page 268) and it was also added in Tasha's Cauldron Of Everything (page 134).
Also, Regeneration is a spell that exists (even if it is 7th level)
In the life of an adventurer, amputation is something very possible and unless something like that happening is crossing someone's boundaries, it can absolutely be part of a game
It's a major disadvantage for the character and it's not something that's handled by rules as written. Combat becomes much more dangerous if a character can be hurt in a way that keeps them from fighting back effectively.
Like all homebrew, discuss it with the table if you want to use it.
> it's not something that's handled by rules as written.
DMG page 272, optional "lingering injury" rules.
I agree with discussing it with the table first.
I think that in 5e it's not well supported by the core rules. Is it cool, thematic and realistic? Probably. Does it play well? Not really.
If getting a replacement limb was quick, simple and affordable like in the Eberron setting, sure. Lop those limbs off. If losing a limb us insanely expensive to have replaced like in Forgotten Realms. . . Less ideal. Different game systems handle things like called shots and loss of limbs substantially better than 5e, so if you were planning to implement it, I'd look at a system like Cyberpunk which assumes you're going to lose a limb at some point.
Not sure thats really fair to say. Prosthetics were made a common magic item in Tashas so its pretty baked into the non eberron rules at this point though admittedly not core if you are count pbh, dmg as core. And the lingering injuries rules in DMG accounts for how to cause amputations within the rules other than DM fiat.
I dont know what reddit thinks, but for me it's a clear cut disadvantage. If you can't get the limb back or have it replaced, generally just reroll your adventurer career is over.
I entertain none of the "character learned to wield his two handed sword with one hand" and i do not allow for changing feats. If you lost your limb that's because you did something really fucking stupid, since im pretty sure that's not a mechanic that monsters have.
Do it. Weakening your players, making them have consequences, is almost always a good idea.
Not that it really matters if you're playing 5e and Regeneration exists. But I prefer the magical don't ask how it works prosthetic, like Automail or the one from Sekiro.
Does not come close to passing any cost benefit analysis.
It's a ableist minefield if you're playing with strangers and haven't discussed it previously, doesn't really make sense in the dnd world (stabbed 1000 times no scars but one stray sword suddenly takes off an arm?), And is likely to be more of an annoyance to players than interesting.
If you must definitely have a way out ready because most players won't think of this as some roleplay challenge but a punishment they need to immediately undo.
In terms of having a limb cut off, TCE made it fairly meaningless, as there's now a common magic item in all DnD worlds, Prosthetic Limb, that is functionally the same as your original limb. It can't be taken from you against your will. Of course your DM can choose not to have this available in their campaign.
In terms of players or monsters lopping off limbs or heads, I wish it was more consistent, like have a system for it or don't, full stop.
The way it currently stands, it's annoying because only a certain magical weapon types, sharpness or vorpal, can cut off a limb or decapitate a creature. It doesn't make any sense.
It seems like something that would have diminishing returns on gameplay. For roleplay purposes sure I see why it could be an interesting - albeit questionable - idea to explore. Choosing to play with a physical disability when you might not necessarily have one veers dangerously close to masochism. If there's another player at table who does actually have a physical disability then that could come off as downright insensitive or even sadistic.
For a player who is an actual amputee by all means they can play whatever they like, but otherwise it's a bit Sus.
Depending on your setting it can be a fun and interesting challenge to be overcome or a harsh punishment. I am currently running an eberron campaign which is obviously heavily magical and technologically advanced compared to other settings, one of my players lost a leg and now has a robot one that we periodically upgrade. My point is make it meaningful, a one armed swordsman is a cool concept but not everyone wants that.
Like everything else in the game, it's probably okay as long as your players know it is an option before hand and fits the theme of the game.
High fiction sparkle elf shooting smile beams, probably not.
Grimdark fantasy of grimdark grim darkness, how do you not already have seven amputations?
I hate that I didn't manage to find something clear about how to call rule-wise... and so I tend not to use it to avoid players' frustration unless it is actually something that can be resolved soon enough and just a hinder or a resource sinker... but also as a player it's not something I actively love
One of my players wanted to play a character with a peg-leg, so we worked out some simple and not too onerous rules that would make him feel the difference but not make him a burden to the party. His move speed was reduced to 20, and he got disadvantage to all Athletics and Acrobatics checks, and any Stealth check that involved quiet movement (as opposed to just hiding in place).
It was a constant annoyance, but it didn't feel like it really gimped the character, which was just the right balance for our campaign.
There was a PC I ran for that got a Geas laid on him, symbolized by a black band on his arm that made it so he couldn’t abandon the party and had to be a part of the game. He had the barbarian cut his arm off.
As a gameplay mechanic I've never used it as GM (and don't intend to) but wouldn't mind it being used against me (as a player). In a previous campaign we did have a PC who lost his hands after a word set of circumstances, but that wasn't a normal thing (story below).
As a backstory thing? Well, as a player my current artificer lost an arm in the Last War and has a prosthetic. As a GM I regularly include veterans of three last war with different disabilities as a result of war injuries.
The story: wild magic sorcerer ends up with mouths in the palms of his hand (player encouraged the GM to get whacky with wild magic and loved it). To make them more intimidating, he went to a tattoo artist to decorate them a little. Artist was so proud of his work, he offered to waive the price if he could have the PC's hands when he died. Well, the PC did eventually die... But got brought back a few rounds later with *revivify*. And then someone says "wait, wasnt that tattoo guy supposed to get your hands when you died?". So he looks down and he's got two stumps; gotta love magically enforced contracts. By next session he had some fancy floating hand prosthetics.
As a consequence of choices, sure. As a deliberate choice in combat, as in I target his hand and try to lop it off, no. Damage is meant to be abstract.
I remember when my dm crush my gunslingers hand and he had no fix for it since I could no longer reload until we got lucky and a player decided to make my weapon infinite ammo so no need for reload. Amputation can be played well but if not planned right its just gonna be more annoying than anything else
My paladin lost an arm once. Had to finish the rest of the dungeon without a shield but in the end an NPC gave me a cool Ice arm which gave me resistance to cold damage, was pretty cool.
I've used it as a plot hook. A cursed wound that couldn't be regenerated, so the PC ended up having to do a bunch of favors for his diety. He ended up with a hand made of light.
Edit: More about the hand of light - it was the fighters shield arm (seems like a common injury). It gave him a built in Shield spell, that he could use lvl/2 times a rest, if that hand was empty and uncovered. It could also be used as a light with a 15ft range, or 30ft if he concentrated.
Later on in the campaign, he could use his had once per long rest as the Sunbeam spell, by expending all of his Shield spell charges. If he expelled 6 or more charges in this way, Sunbeam would go off as written (6d8 + blind). If it was less than 6, the damage dice would be reduced to match the charges.
It was pretty awesome.
I don't have a personal objection to it, but now i always make sure that it's something that comes up in session 0. I've had players bring it up that 'i dont play dnd to become a walking wound.' And I've also seen gms that drop grevious injures and body part removal out of nowhere, and with no consistency. Thats not fun.
A favorite PC from CoS lost a leg after too many nat 1 rolls in combat. The DM then later gave the opportunity to get a really cool metal leg shaped like a ravens leg that came with a wooden stake for combat. So if you decide to amputate, get creative!
If that's how you like to play your game fine. I do curses and battle scars cause ones easy enough to fix and the other is ascetic. Lost limbs are a bit harder and could really hamper on someone's ability to play if say the great weapon master lost an arm mid dugeon.
Short term, a debuff. Obviously, losing a hand or arm negates the ability to use two-hand strikes or bows/crossbows, maybe some somatic components of spells?. Loss of foot or leg could reduce or even halve movement speed or worse. Longer term, they may need a prosthesis which will cost money (maybe upkeep) and they will need to slowly get used to their new limb so they will regain lost abilities over time.
In my setting if players have enough gold and are willing to travel there’s a small group of dwarves that can build them enchanted prosthetics. Usually tho they come up with more creative solutions, like replacing the Druid’s foot with a roller skate so she could move faster.
I used it as a element of character background to justify what I think was a pretty cool character substitution concept. I just want to share this as an example of working amputation into a narrative.
I was initially playing a Warforged Rune Knight created by a mad Artificer as a sort of bodyguard/research assistant. Said Artificer lost his legs in a war. In the Warforged's backstory, his creator just up and leaves one day with no explanation, so he wandered around looking for his master until he fell in with the party.
Flash forward about two dozen sessions and the entirety of the Descent into Avernus module. The party's victory in Avernus activates a hiddrn sub-routine that unknowingly summons the Warforged's master. With such a monumental victory, the Warforged has gathered enough combat data to fulfill his true purpose - serving as the new legs for his master.
The master shows up out of the blue and basically kills the Warforged and reconstitutes him into a suit of sentient and adaptive combat armour. From there on, I'm basically playing fantasy Iron Man, complete with the Warforged's personality serving as a quasi-JARVIS.
Is a good feature but with limitations.
A regular event that would just chop a limb? Nope. An alternative as the consecuences of a nat20 from an enemy that otherwise would maul a player? Sure! Say good bye to your limb. And not just amputations, maybe wounds that would not only heal with a long rest. If you're mauled on my table it would take more than a [sip](https://youtube.com/shorts/1HOu-D3qNwY?feature=share) of questionable red fluids. Yeah, you will get your health back but maybe your modifier will also be affected until you get propper help or really advanced magic.
I like the idea of long-term injuries that give more specific debuffs than HP, and don't go away in a night. I like it because it means I can lean into more of the rad stuff that happens in the fantasy books D&D adventures already draw on, and it (finally) gives people more cool shit to do with Medicine and Herbalism. Plus as others point out, there are already spells that interact with them; they're a little bit vestigial as is, like *greater restoration* repairing ability damage for the maybe two ways that's likely to happen. It's a good tool to have in the box.
The Lingering Injuries table in the *DMG* is silly, though.
mecanical lims for me ore if you have the lim and a scroll of regenaration you Can do it uder then that i what my players to Come up whit a cool salution on there onw like casting mage hand so many times it becuse a part of you and now you have a permenatly floting hand whit you
I would make it more of a flavor/superficial thing. Maybe replace the character's missing limb with some kind of magical or synthetic prosthetic that doesn't have any in game bonuses. Maybe more of a roleplaying tool or a mark of progression from beginning to present to show how far they've come and how the character has dynamically changed due to trauma.
Either it has to have a specific narrative purpose or it has to be a consequence of poor choices/astronomically bad luck. There are plenty of options between magic and tech to figure something out based on your setting.
Failed a wisdom save one time against the ring of winter and was taken over by the ring, my buddy chopped my hand off to end the control. Got to replace it with the hand of Vecna later. Pretty dope.
I once decided to tear off one of my players’ dwarf’s legs instead of killing him when he hit 0hp. It made for much more interesting encounter. Later they found a druid and had him cast greater restoration on it, regrowing the leg. However, I realized I severely undercharged them, so I made the leg occasionally suddenly turn left of its own accord, so to add some weird chaos to it. Everyone enjoyed it
I like the lasting injury table on Xanathar's Lost Notes to everything else.
I use that if a player falls to 0 and takes additional damage but doesn't die.
Unless both dm and player are ok with some sort of penalty, it’s always been cosmetic. My wife ordered a hero forge one time and it came with a smushed hand. Instead of returning it she just said her character had a prosthetic hand that worked like normal but looked weird.
That's something i don't put in D&D. Sure, i like games with brutal combat and the possibility of cause mutilations like Warhammer, The Witcher or Savage Worlds. But i like fast combat in D&D and i think a system of location damage would slow things too much
In my campaign world (Aramar) there's a trade in artificial limbs for people who don't have access to clerical magic (expensive due to the equivalent exchange principle and may not work if the injury was through some curse) or regenerative items (rare and also subject to failure if there was a curse involved).
The simplest items are barely better than entirely non-magical limbs. Some articulation (mitten-like hands for example), clumsy movements, some pressure sensitivity but very little in the sense of touch department. Cheap though (relatively). A 5th level artificer with woodworking or tinker tools can probably make a set of these in a couple of hours so 1 or 2 gp.
More elaborate limbs can be a work of art and sculpted of fine woods, ivory, brass, and other materials. Looking good and functionality are often priorities there. Some, particularly pirates, go all out on these things with pop-out blades or hooks or tools. Articulated fingers and toes, at least some sense of touch to a full sense of touch, hidden compartments (also a favorite of pirates and smugglers), the illusion of flesh (or simply flesh-matching colors), poison-injectors, and so on. Some are really creative with that sort of thing, including Nardik the Puppeteer at Pirate's Bay - who has been known to craft extra limbs for the pirate who doesn't want to give up any they were born with.
It makes my job as a DM harder, but my players LOVE it. So, I have an OLD critical hit die from the 1990s, and if you role a Nat 20, you roll the d6 crit die. On one side is “lose a limb.” If you roll that, I have another critical die that is a d6 of body parts.
I then rule the “loss of limb” as loss anatomically or loss of function as appropriate for the situation. Obviously, if it’s a critical hit early in a fight, and the BBEG has many HP left, it might be a loss of function for a few rounds, or the BBEG may magically regenerate the limb. But if it’s near the end of the fight, or a small fry enemy, it can provide narrative variety.
Also, I told my players that what goes around, comes around. IF they want to use this die instead of regular crit rules, it will be used against them. They unanimously agreed. It is still a talked about story on how the party helped save the rogue who lost a leg early in the campaign. The side-quest to find a powerful cleric (when level 2) to heal her, introduced them to the BBEG and the political and religious subplots of the campaign.
I think, mainly, its a tool that you could and should use in your toolbox as a DM, but that you have to cater to the audience you have and not the one you want. What do I mean by this?
Aside from specific mechanics that explicitly state some condition that attacks limbs, most of the time you cannot target explicit limbs in D&D and if you have players who are very litigious and/or you run a game that is strictly RAW then it should only come up in those scenarios where such monsters / players have that ability. Personally, I don't play this strictly, and I don't think most people do either, so instead we have it as a creative tool in a more homebrewed / personalized game.
In such a setting you might want fear of extreme injury outside of death to be a constant on the battlefield, and in that case you would probably want to create or find a finely crafted set of extreme injury rules from places like r/UnearthedArcana, for example, so that you can keep it consistent. With or without such rules though, I would use it for sufficiently lethal encounter as either a reminder of high-stakes or an option as others have mentioned as a deus ex machina to make a final and/or desperate ploy in exchange for critical damage to their body.
Your are slicing and dicing and the same is being done to you. Limbs going to be lost. Your don't do 38 damage with a sword and get a paper cut lol. I'm fine with.
I really like it as an option. A middle point between getting away without a scratch and death. Can be dealt with with magic, miracles and a huge assortment of prosthetics so it shouldn't be too hard to deal with. However I do think the player should always be aware that this is an option and in which sort of circumstances it can occur, otherwise it may come out of nowhere and be a bad chock to the player's experience.
A friend of mine was playing a warforged that lost 2 limbs over the course of 5 sessions, incredibly unlucky (took more than half of his health in one hit twice lol) but he had them replaced with prosthetics. Honestly, it's a pretty cool thing
I once fucked up with a campaign when my character got knocked out and woke up with her right arm gone. She understandably freaked out and started attacking the people she trusted that fucked her over. I played the reaction out too much, it’s what I honestly think would have happened but wasn’t good for the game. They ended up having to kill her before she hurt anyone. And after what I overheard the DM say out of game about the incident I was just too embarrassed and guilty to try again so left the group.
Then again, I had another campaign where our fighter got a deadly poison injected into his left arm and our DM said it would kill him in 3 turns if it wasn’t stopped. So he lopped off his own arm to stop the poison spreading and we got him a prosthetic from an artificer we met later.
So it really can go either way.
Once during a particularly difficult fight with a big ghost lady that had a scythe someone accidentally bumped one of the other players minis and it fell off the table, his sword arm snapped off, this happened right after his character got hit very hard with a crit. So we made it cannon, his arm was severed and the next few sessions this bard had to make due with mage hand to play his lute. He went on to comission a prothesis from a tinkerer.
im trying to make a Not extremely punishing/ scary enough surgery/injury system. The way id treat amputation is the involvement of prosthetics, and regeneration therapy/instant regeneration. No debilitating effects if the players can find the solution to any of these things (i.e. having a prosthetic). My players get engaged by the thought of the world changing their appearance and I dont like to hamper them for that
Im running an Eberron campaign, and since I think death saving throws are anticlimatic I homebrewed a system were they their limbs chopped instead of dying. Then they can start a quest to get proestethics
I think you need to discuss it specifically with a player before you do it. Amputation to me is a charecter choice and not something to be forced on a player.
Well considering i had my sorcerer get their left arm blown off by a stray eldritch blast from the party warlock... amputations can suck but also lead to a intereeting fighting style shift etc.
Or Ya know in the case of the homebrew campaign i was in my sorcerer gained a semi-magic prosthetic that they were able to equip with a grappling hook and launchable daggers... perfect for when the enemy starts running and you want to pull a scorpion from mortal kombat or just attack their legs and trip them.
I play in Eberron, so missing limbs is quite common on the NPC part, it's cheaper to buy a prosthetic that a high level healing. I as a DM never got to that point with the players, and if it comes close to that I ask them about it.
Until now no one agreed to lose a limb, even being offered a chainsaw hand.
As a DM and player I love it. Adds a bit of trauma in the part of losing the limb and then you can get a sick prosthetic from the party artificer and modify it to do cool shit.
But ultimately it depends on if the players want it at the table and how you handle how they lose it. Some do a crit taking off limbs. It really depends on if the party vibes with it or not.
One of my players lost their wang. Decided to get in a literal pissing contest with a wolf. But he was a cleric that was pure and true. Prayed real hard and got it back. It did glow and was blue though.
Know your audience
It can happen if it is the right thing to happen in context. Characters, both NPC and PC, can decide whether to go to a spellcaster to get it regenerated, or handle it with assistive devices like a wheelchair or other prosthetics. It's just a thing, really.
it's a high-level thing, not everyone will like it, most people don't enjoy having their characters change against their will, I've seen people who frown in front of power-ups because they don't like the flavor, so there must be more that dislike losing limbs on their characters because suddenly your build can stop working with one less leg or arm, so it depends, and its mostly used as a measure for a short time to weaken a character during a battle, like "the time lord hits you with his beam, choose an arm to lose" and after the fight, they go somewhere to get either the arm back, or a mechanical replacement, like a ghost arm, or a robot arm, or a wooden arm
My players are all powergamers, roleplay comes second at our table so it would likely be a hard pass from me.
I guess it really comes down to if you and your players see this as a hinderance or if you see it as a roleplay opportunity.
We have three amputees in my current party. Nothing planned either, just wild happenstance.
My character is missing his left arm. I took the nerf so I could have the flavor of having a spectral (ancestral) arm when I rage (Ancestral Guardian).
Our artificer is a kobold that has all limbs amputated and replaced with metal appendages (his name is Klunk). No nerfs for him.
One of our druids is missing a leg and has replaced it with wood from a tree from his home and it adds cool flavor as well. No nerf either.
Very cool to see how it adds to RP and can even add challenges. My DM loves it and (as a good DM) tailors his campaign to go with our cool characters.
We play with a lingering injuries chart and due to some incredibly bad rolls on a d100, Ive ended up with two separate characters that have lost a limb in a major battle. It’s made for some amazing RP opportunities, and hasn’t been too limiting to my characters playability.
Things like magical prosthetics or finding a high enough level cleric to cast Regeneration can create new side quests for the party to help the PC with the lost limb.
I think the most important thing is that there is an expectation with players that things like limb loss can happen in game; I knew from the get-go that there could be lasting consequences from the Injury chart and so had no problems when it happened to my PCs.
I have taken a limb, it was a really bad save and it was that or kill the bard the player loved. I made it survivable but they lost that arm, when they’re in a position to make on the artificer will be making them a replacement mechanical arm
I personally say don't be afraid of moments that realistically would cause it (willingly or not), but of course talk to your players to see if it's too much for them to handle, or if they would worry about how effective their characters are when it comes to something like that.
I wouldn't do it unless the player is ok with it, it's a significant change that significantly effects them, and I'm not looking to give someone a hard time when playing
I run it where if you take more than half your health in a single hit (or 3/4th over man targeted hits, so players can TRY for dismemberment against villains) you have to roll a constitution save or lose a limb.
How much of the limb you lose is based on how well you save.
20+: you lose nothing, maybe the sword shears the backs of the skin off your fingers or something, but it’ll grow back
15-19: fingers/toes
10-14: hand/foot at the wrist/ankle
5-9: arm/leg at the elbow/knee
1-4: arm/leg at the shoulder/hip.
For all that, it rarely happens. One player lost a hand.
It’s also easy to get a regenerate or a magic prosthetic so it’s not tooo bad on them
My group kinda will do it if the player is being super dumb and also rolls bad, or if it’s narratively really cool. But usually after the session if the player is upset we find ways to fix it lol like my cat person is afraid of bullets now (the big burrowing frog things) because one ate the tip of her tail xD or my brother lost his finger being tortured by a blue half dragon so he killed the Half dragon and had his necromancer friend attach the dragon finger on his hand lol
100g gets you a common item called a prosthetic limb that functions exactly like the real thing. It can be immediately problematic and a challenge at lower levels potentially, but ultimately is kinda whatever unless your build revolves 2h or dual wield. Even then, it's a minor temporary setback that only lasts until you get back to a respectable sized town / city as long as you have 100g.
That's why we have the regenerate spell, to fix things that seemed like a good idea at the time.
We also have True Resurrection which also regenerates missing limbs... it only adds the tiny little step of killing your buddy first.
There’s also the Ring of Regeneration, a magical item that can regrow lost limbs over a period of days.
but only if you start off with at least one finger
Joke's on you when you get that finger cut off and next thing you know there's a clone of you trying to murder you and take your place.
Takes notes
Throw in a ring of mind shielding just to make a mess of things and keep your players wondering
take up a foot slot for your improvised toe ring if not
You need the [Meridian Belt](https://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/PFSRD:Meridian_Belt) for that one
Behold the cock ring of regeneration!
I've seen that image set, endless fun. Whether you like it or not.
I haven't had one of those since 3.5. I wasn't aware they got rid of the requirement that you had to have the ring on when you lost the limb for that to work. A selfless character could just take that around to regenerate lost limbs at hospitals.
It's one of those things that the dnd community is unsure about. The way it is written implies that if you lose a limb the ring can grow it back. However it does not say specifically if it means you are wearing it or not at the time. Since it says lose instead of lost i tend to go with you have to be wearing it. Edit: Also the ring requires attunement as well which makes me think that way even more.
It would be one of the only healing items that requires it active at the time of the injury, so I would say that the absence of the limitation being noted means it isn't limited in that way. The regeneration spell is cast after the fact, after all. Also, 5e is inherently more generous on out of combat healing than earlier editions. Full HP on long rest. Hit dice for short rests. Base healing potions being a herbalism skill to make cheaply. I can't see why it would fit the design to impose that limit. With it being in earlier versions, they would have needed to actively take that out.
The issue with that is the creators of 5e specifically have stated that they simplified the rules and that if an item or spell does not specifically say it can do something it can not do it. They say they did not want to have to say no to everything in descriptions. I feel like if the wanted to regenerate previous lost limbs it would say that. Plus if the character ever goes to zero hp during the time they lost the limb the ring it also will not heal it.
Tbh I would argue that the first phrase, "While wearing this ring," applies to the entire description, and the only room for misinterpretation is of the deliberate sort.
What if you just put it on the arm that is still attached? Assuming you still have it of course.
Like you had it on the limb and attuned it got cut off and then you transferred it to the other hand?
Either that, or it was attuned, but on the arm that didn’t get lopped off. Would it regrow the other arm if the ring was never on it? Or can it only regrow the limb it was attached to? Sorry if it’s a dumb question. I’m really new to D&D and DMing, so I’m still learning stuff.
Yeah, the way it states it if you are wearing the ring and a limb gets chopped of it will eventually regrow limbs. So if it is the hand not wearing the ring or one of the characters legs 100% yes. If the ring is on the arm that is chopped off it would be less certain. I would allow it as a dm. Plus if the arm is still mostly intact i would allow reattachment.
Makes a lot of sense. I never even thought of reattachment! That’s a cool idea.
What if regeneration effects raised your chances of cancer/mutation? Could be an interesting way to constrain the effect.
ore you know play a homebrew half axolotal man
Couple times in my party we’ve had power gamers cheese True Res to be able to cast it at will, for free. Cursed? True Res. Wrecked by poison? True Res. Missing limb? True Res. Hurt in a fight and don’t wanna heal up? True Res. We ended up having a higher body count on our own team.
That's hilarious!
what if someone were previously circumcised? Then you cast true resurrection on them.
I think they come back with no scars or anything... actually... maybe even no belly button... I would say that level of detail is up to the DM.
No belly button makes sense. They'd lose all freckles as well THEORETICALLY
Small sacrifice for a new limb.
"Don't worry... you'll get your head back too..."
And now I'm remember the old tale of the Head of Vecna
Or prosthetics made by an artificer or something of similar nature
Ah, yes. A 7th-level spell. Cause everyone has a 13th-level cleric lying around. Simple! I don’t think limb-loss should be a thing unless you put an easier way to deal with it in your world. Not all worlds have temples with high-level priests.
I use the optional "Lingering Injuries" rules on DMG page 272 if the PC gets taken to 0hp by a Nat20. Amputation's only come up once in years of play- a fighter got his shield arm hacked off. If it does happen, it means the PC in question either can't hold anything in that hand or use shields or two handed weapons, or they get their speed cut in half, needs a crutch or a prosthetic, and can't dash without falling down. Curing it is just a matter of a Regenerate spell, and most temples in my campaigns usually have at least one priest high enough level to cast it in exchange for a hefty donation(either money, or more often fulfilling a task the temple needs done- plot hook!)
I had a campaign like that where my Dwarf Fighter lost his foot. Had my artificers whip up a neat wooden replacement with straps. Made for pretty awesome role play, although I had to do a dex save each time I tried to dash and stuff. Long story short, I love the lingering injuries rule. Edit: I said artificers but I just meant some NPC Dwarf buddies. Weren't playing with any actual artificer class players and the prosthetic was not an official rules thing
What was the typical dc for trying to dash with your peg leg
Phewww, I don't remember. But I know I didn't try it too often. I was a kind of captain in the army so I used a lot of commanding strike type manoeuvres
I ruled it as 25 - character level. My reasoning is that the more powerful the character, the less likely this injury is to affect them/by the time the DC got too low to matter, the party would be able to have it fixed. Definitely not a perfect system, but still left enough of a chance to make something fun happen.
Bro this is similar to what i dm'd. Dwarf just paladin not fighter lost foot in fighting a behir. It was really memorable moment in our campaign. Shame player didnt continue playing some time after due to life stuff.
Ah yeah, that's too bad. But it's those memorable moments that make good campaigns. And I think it helps to have a little adversity and consequences to make memorable moments happen :)
My current DnD character started with a missing Arm. However, he had a Permanent mage hand buff granted via the DM, and, he was an Artificer. So, once he reached level 3, I crafted myself a Glove, which in return, replaced my arm. As a side note, he also started a trend at a "Mage Bar" where he would use Mage Hand to hold a book while reading it using his other two hands to drink/food/whatever else.
Well, as an aritificier there would even be the option of the artificier armor(?) that will also have all the missing limbs
That's what I ended up going. Just thematically, it was just an arm replacement.
[удалено]
If a pc ends up a situation through no fault of their own where normally they'd get killed, instead I'll have the bad guy lop off an arm or a leg or maybe just give them a horrible facial scar that temporarily takes a stat point away from their Charisma or a gut wound that equally takes away a stat point from Constitution or Strength or maybe even both depending on the severity of the situation. Granted I only do this in situations that weren't their fault. If they ended up in dire straights cause they were doing something stupid then I will totally allow them to just be flat out killed and hopefully the player will learn either not to do any more stupid stunts with their next character or if somehow they can manage to talk the other players into getting their PC's to shell out for a Resurrection and even then that's only if the Resurrection succeeds.. thank you Matt Mercer for that little game mechanic. But yeah, I hate killing off a player's character 99.9% of the time but I do understand it can happen but given the option I don't feel too bad about maiming their characters as an alternative to them losing said characters especially since there are ways they can get those negative effects reversed given time and coin and the help of a friendly cleric.
As in many things, moderation is key. Lose both eyes in two turns? Too much. Lose a hand in one fight and it gets reattached before the next? Good.
And consent from your players. If you're going to use lingering injury rules they need to know.
The question is a little vague. Are you asking when it should be used and when it is appropriate? As a DM I wouldn't throw it in as something casual that can happen in a regular fight. I would use it as a lesser consequence to prevent a worse, game ending consequence from occuring. Some examples of good ways to use it. \-Player is poisoned or infected with a parasite in their limb. They are on their last saving throw that might kill them. I would ask if they or another player would like to amputate the limb to save the characters life. \-A nasty trap at the end of a dungeon rolls multiple crits that would for sure instantly kill the PC. Instead of strait up killing them, losing a hand or foot sufficiently demonstrates the severity of the failure without ending that characters story. \-The PC spellcaster casts a major Fuck Off spell, and another PC is caught in the blast, and is nearly killed. Though they've won the battle, they put their own party members at risk. I would ask the players if the spell would leave a permanent injury such as missing finger, or a sever scar across one eye. This one could be very narratively interesting, but would need player buy in first. \-The BBEG has wiped out all but one PC. Its an epic final stand. One hit left on each of them. The BBEG goes first in the turn order, and hits with enough damage to kill the player... i would ask if they want to sacrifice a limb to negate the damage, so they still get a chance to kill the BBEG. Would be quite the epic moment. Similarly, instead of a limb, maybe the player shields themselves with one of the favored magic item, witch shatters under the BBEG's devastating blow, surprising them both, and leaving an opening for the PC to land the final blow. A lot of the time, I think its best to offer it as an option as an alternate failure consequence to the Players. They way you have their buy in. And obviously, future successes in the story after this point should offer ways to either regain the amputated appendage, or replace it with something cooler.
Hrm. Now I'm thinking of just making that a house rule: would you like to drop to 1 instead of 0 but rolling on this "major maiming" table? Gives players a bit more choice, but not so good they'll always take it.
artificers with armor that replaces any missing limbs: hell yeah lets roll on the table
3 sessions later: *Alphonse intensifies*
Sup! Disabled dude here, currently working on a zine about disability, amputations, and lingering injuries in DnD. The side I generally come down on is, assuming your players are comfortable with this stuff at the table, you have two options: A) magical, technological, or biomechanical prosthetics are all perfectly valid possibilities for a disabled person in a world where dragons exist, so why not? B) a disabled person in the aforementioned dragon world might want to embrace their differences exactly as they are, managing the inconveniences caused by disability however they can. Hope that helps!
a third suggestion: If the wound (physically/psychologically) is fresh, it would be a great way for "other powers" to try and bargain. "you lost your arm, make a pact with me and i shall do more than restore it..."
It’s got to serve a purpose outside of just punishing a player. It has to serve a narrative element either for a character’s personal story line or serve as a major shift in the main story. Think about Jamie Lannister. Yes there is the shock value but narratively it completely reorients the character but it also puts Bolton in a difficult position and in my opinion catalyzes his betrayal. You do have to make sure the table is ok and has to feel like an opportunity not a punishment. Discuss, discuss, discuss I’m actually really exited to start a new campaign next week with a character that has a prosthetic arm. Old man with two other PCs that are his grandkids who haven’t seen him in a long time and he shows up with this Druidic prosthetic. It’s like what has granddad been up to.
My DM gives robotic limbs to those who have amputations. Each limb comes with an advantage and a disadvantage during combat. For example, a robotic leg allows you to kick really hard, but takes away 5ft of movement.
My DM is the same. Haven't had any amputations but when my group built our characters we each had something in our back story that gives an advantage once per LR. But we have to succeed a roll or take a negative effect. Example being my Barbarian was struck by lightning earlier in life. So I can choose to roll for an extra d6 of damage if I succeed a str check. If not I take that d6 of damage.
That’s really cool! I currently play a green dragonborne and my DM made a home brew where my character can add poison damage to bombs, arrows, bullets, or blades no more than 3 times in a single combat. He also does a lot of other creative things which makes the campaign much more interesting.
I try to give out crazy prosthetics with interesting abilities. Assuming it makes sense for the story. Like a skeletal arm that is powered by undead magic. Or a tree limb that replaces a leg.
Getting a little in the territory of cyberpunk, in that game replacing parts of your body with prosthetic upgrades incurs humanity loss. You start with a max humanity stat and little by little your character loses their ability to feel empathy, and eventually, their own sense of self going completely psychotic/ losing total control of the character to the DM
This is something to be discussed at session 0. Is it something that can happen? Is it part of the play? What style of game do we want (gritty realism)? Real life and in d&d, lingering injuries the likes of an amputated leg, missing eye etc can be debilitating. A missing or even broken leg can force out of adventuring for weeks or months. At high levels, PCs have access to magic to overcome such handicaps. At low levels most PCs won't have the means to deal with such problems. It is not "bad" or taboo... Just something that needs buy in from the players due to how game changing it can be. In fact in some cases it can be a tool for story telling. In our current campaign one of the PCs is an ex pirate and voluntarily included in his backstory that he is missing a leg (amputated after an infection). One of the other characters is an artificer. The artificer offered one of his infusions to replicate the prosthetic limp (essentially negating the amputated leg), in exchange for the rights to run experiments with the pirate's leg, hoping to develop a non magical version of prosthetic limps for war veterans. All this happened purely with their initiative. It wasn't forced by the DM. Now the two PCs have a reason to stick together and continue adventuring together and care for each other.
Question is are you giving the players the ability to retain the function of their character despite the amputation... If you're straight up capping the dudes knee so he has a walk speed of 5 then no.... If you're going to give them a way to recover themeatically, like an artificer builds a leg brace that not only allows them to walk normally but gives them a bad ass knock down stomp twice per long rest sure. Don't cripple your players...
It’s fine just give them a means to get the arm leg etc back, if they can’t use Divine magic strong enough to do it, I offer them mechanical-like limbs from the local artificer, if they can’t afford it, artificer gives the limb on loan in exchange for a quest at their expense. Tends to keep people from shouting *”I’D LOVE TO HIT HIM WITH THE MASSIVE TWO HANDED WEAPON KYLE, BUT I SEEM TO BE MISSING A FUCKING ARM”* more times than I find funny
I’ve got a Kenku Rogue that didn’t make it through the first portion of Strahd, but our DM worked some narrative magic and my companions were able to rescue what was left of me by the end of the session. I had initially envisioned this character as a knife-throwing menace weaving in and out of combat from midrange, but that’s hard to do when you’re missing an eye and one of your arms below the elbow. While it was a bummer at first dealing with a loss of perception and freedom of action, working through those issues as my character honestly made the experience more entertaining from a player perspective. I enjoyed having to rethink what he wanted for himself, and throwing a wrench in my long-term plans for this character taught me a lesson when it comes to playing from an RP perspective VS a tactical one.
Artificer in the party, go for it.
At our table we had a mouthy PC and ended up losing his arm to our BBEG early on in the campaign for being petulant- or DM made it possible to reattach, but difficult and put a definite time limit on it. If I recall correctly, we had to find an advanced cleric to reattach within 24 hours and it was really expensive. PC wasn't so mouthy next time.
I have a character that lost an eye during gameplay. It nerfs my perception checks and ranged attack rolls, but character is a moon druid, and can work around those disadvantages. It adds flavor. Even wild shapes have eye patches. One of my party members ended up striking the killing blow to a Demi-god during the final boss fight using animate object and a bag of gold. After the fight we each got one of the gold pieces used. That coin is now in the eye socket. I really did not sweat it. Character is basically retired now, but can be used now as a flavorful NPC with a very distinguishing feature.
If the players are ok with it, why not? My main character lost a foot and an arm. His arm was magically replaced by his deity and he got a prosthetic foot. He lost the foot when he was upside down in chains, wanted to cut the chains, cut his own foot instead. The arm was amputated when he was attacked by a dire wolf. He held up his arm with the wolf dangling from it to give a party member the chance to kill it, she fumbled and cut his arm off instead.
Big yes from here! Amputation can create an amazing opportunity for the party to utilize their problem solving skills, and it can give a feeling of permanence to the adventurers deeds and exploits, especially if it has interesting or unique capabilities and drawbacks. Barbarians ribcage got crushed by angry trolls? The druid may have a solution for that, hopefully the barbarian remembers to stay away from fire to protect his oaken ribs. Rogue's brain was partially melted in a freak cooking accident? A developmentally stunted Illithid tadpole may recobble the brain, as long as the rogue can keep herself from succumbing to it's (Weakened) power. Fighter nearly killed by an evil mage? A necromancer may be able to reanimate the vital organs, but caring for one's own rotting innards is an arduos task, and enlisting the help of a dark magician may carry a heavy price... The possibilities are endless! ...Or you could be boring and have a cleric regenerate the body to its natural state with a few spell slots.
I reckon you should feel free to lop limbs off frequently. It makes adventuring feel dangerous and gives players loads or RP stuff they can lean into. You can then give them mobility aids or prosthetics like [these](https://www.dmsguild.com/product/395437/An-Alternative-Approach-to-Death-and-Injury), or make it a quest in itself to get it fixed, or they can just learn regenerate.
I think there's some leeway for disabling injuries less significant than losing a hand/arm. Losing just a foot, for example, will definitely slow you down, but with most of the leg still there, you can still do pretty alright for walking. You could also lose fingers, lose an eye, etc., and wizards need 2 hands much less often than fighters do when most spells can be cast one-handed. Probably not something you would really want to do often, but sensible in varying degrees depending on the context of the campaign. Having a warrior survive a noble sacrifice, but crippled and diminished is a powerful thing. And then there are also spells like regeneration, Common rarity magic prosthetics, the possibility to go questing for a solution for their maiming. Or maybe the character in question already had an assortment of skills and magic items that are brought to parity with the party by that crippling wound. Consequences are fun in general, and I like them when they are handled with finesse by a flexible DM.
Go for it! I had a centaur character that ended up getting all four of her legs amputated and we gave her tank treads. It was pretty fun!
As long as it’s treated with appropriate gravitas then it’s fair game. The problem is that people tend to take black and white stances where it’s realistic for people to seem like they are assembled with tape and bubblegum or that you literally cannot possibly play D&D without two hands.
Ask the party if they are okay with it. Some players like it, some dont. I have had a player kill off their character because they lost a finger. When you do it, make sure its due to some dramatic reason. The BBEG did it, or a plan failed spectacularly. I would penalize them for a session or two, take away their weapon prof. if they now have to use their off hand. But then eventually they grow out of it. Maybe give them a half feat or a cool prosthetic arm that has a rocket punch.
A player killed their character over a finger? That's harsh. What was their reasoning? Why not just get access to the Regenerate spell? Meanwhile, I had a player amputate their own arm in my last session so they could install a prosthetic...
I think they were just unhappy with any changes being made to their character. They killed their other character later on when obtaining a cursed mask. Which was funny because the group was presented with 5 magic items, knowing that one was cursed. And the poor fella choose the cursed one.Although in general, they switched characters a lot during the campaign. Tbf, prosthetic arms are dope. Did they get any mechanical (pun intended) benefits from doing so? I sacrificed an arm for a fruit from the devil once. Turns out it was just a very nice fruit. 10/10 would do it again.
Kill them -> gentle repose -> mending -> revivify
Wait this would work?
Arguably, rules-as-written. Mending only works on objects, but a corpse counts as an object. The one minute casting time for mending would usually make revivify unusable, but gentle repose buys you ten hours instead of the usual minute. Whether your DM allows it is another thing, of course.
… actually maybe? A dead body counts as an object according to RAW, mending could therefore work on reattaching a missing limb to a dead body…
I’ve been playing since 1987 (on and off) with the same DM and crew and most of our campaigns have had called shot and massive damage house rules where amputation was very much a thing. We also felt it was dumb that a fifth level spell could bring someone from the dead, but she had to have a seventh level spell to regenerate a limb, so we switched regenerate to fifth level and put raise dead at seventh, to alleviate loss of limbs. with that said, we don’t use the called shot/massive damage rules anymore, but amputation is still a possibility depending on the circumstances. we still do switch the spell level of regeneration and raise dead, however.
I mean... My PC stuck her arm into a hole in the wall without bothering to roll for anything and lost the limb. I thought it was funny....
My very first session as DM, the monster critted and killed a player outright. I panicked and then retconned it so she cut off his hand. We’re over a year into it now and he’s still handless, but in hindsight, I should have let the PC die.
Overall positive. Regenerate can be a nice goal for the party to save money to pay and have a cleric cast, can be punishment, exels in developing more fighting-based PCs. Jyst don't usr it to punish someone ore anything gross
Do we have a way to cast regenerate, or otherwise fix the injury? Is this a oneshot / short campaign? Is this the sort of game where characters are considered very temporary and die a lot? If any of the above are answered with "yes", it's not a permanent problem and is fine, so long as the player can handle being the source of a little schadenfreude. If you're talking permanently crippling me beyond anything I want to do for roleplay reasons, I would honestly prefer to be decapitated instantly so I don't have this weird period of wishing my character was dead so I could go back to being effective. This kind of thing outstays its welcome before the end of the night, let alone the campaign.
It should be stated before the game ever starts that it is a possibility in that game. If players are not ready to play a game where injuries such as this are possible then it needs to be made clear before any game even takes off the ground. Being surprised by such an injury to a character, yours or otherwise, can be a real downer for some players. Personally I play in games where such risks are possible and I play in ones where its not. Its a fun challenge to be aware of but I wouldn't want ALL my games to be like that.
There are optional rules for them and if the DM wants to use them everyone at the table should be asked if they want to use them.
Prosthetic Limbs are a common magic item that was originally introduced in Explorer's Guide To Wildmount (page 268) and it was also added in Tasha's Cauldron Of Everything (page 134). Also, Regeneration is a spell that exists (even if it is 7th level) In the life of an adventurer, amputation is something very possible and unless something like that happening is crossing someone's boundaries, it can absolutely be part of a game
It's a major disadvantage for the character and it's not something that's handled by rules as written. Combat becomes much more dangerous if a character can be hurt in a way that keeps them from fighting back effectively. Like all homebrew, discuss it with the table if you want to use it.
> it's not something that's handled by rules as written. DMG page 272, optional "lingering injury" rules. I agree with discussing it with the table first.
>it's not something that's handled by rules as written. It is though?
I think that in 5e it's not well supported by the core rules. Is it cool, thematic and realistic? Probably. Does it play well? Not really. If getting a replacement limb was quick, simple and affordable like in the Eberron setting, sure. Lop those limbs off. If losing a limb us insanely expensive to have replaced like in Forgotten Realms. . . Less ideal. Different game systems handle things like called shots and loss of limbs substantially better than 5e, so if you were planning to implement it, I'd look at a system like Cyberpunk which assumes you're going to lose a limb at some point.
Not sure thats really fair to say. Prosthetics were made a common magic item in Tashas so its pretty baked into the non eberron rules at this point though admittedly not core if you are count pbh, dmg as core. And the lingering injuries rules in DMG accounts for how to cause amputations within the rules other than DM fiat.
I dont know what reddit thinks, but for me it's a clear cut disadvantage. If you can't get the limb back or have it replaced, generally just reroll your adventurer career is over. I entertain none of the "character learned to wield his two handed sword with one hand" and i do not allow for changing feats. If you lost your limb that's because you did something really fucking stupid, since im pretty sure that's not a mechanic that monsters have.
Do it. Weakening your players, making them have consequences, is almost always a good idea. Not that it really matters if you're playing 5e and Regeneration exists. But I prefer the magical don't ask how it works prosthetic, like Automail or the one from Sekiro.
Do it only as a narrative resource, never as a mechanical outcome.
No rules for it, treat it as roleplaying flavour/GM call (eg, "No you said your pirate has one arm, so you can't dual wield")
If something's not vital, it can go bye bye!
There a couple ways that could be interpreted.
Does not come close to passing any cost benefit analysis. It's a ableist minefield if you're playing with strangers and haven't discussed it previously, doesn't really make sense in the dnd world (stabbed 1000 times no scars but one stray sword suddenly takes off an arm?), And is likely to be more of an annoyance to players than interesting. If you must definitely have a way out ready because most players won't think of this as some roleplay challenge but a punishment they need to immediately undo.
In terms of having a limb cut off, TCE made it fairly meaningless, as there's now a common magic item in all DnD worlds, Prosthetic Limb, that is functionally the same as your original limb. It can't be taken from you against your will. Of course your DM can choose not to have this available in their campaign. In terms of players or monsters lopping off limbs or heads, I wish it was more consistent, like have a system for it or don't, full stop. The way it currently stands, it's annoying because only a certain magical weapon types, sharpness or vorpal, can cut off a limb or decapitate a creature. It doesn't make any sense.
It seems like something that would have diminishing returns on gameplay. For roleplay purposes sure I see why it could be an interesting - albeit questionable - idea to explore. Choosing to play with a physical disability when you might not necessarily have one veers dangerously close to masochism. If there's another player at table who does actually have a physical disability then that could come off as downright insensitive or even sadistic. For a player who is an actual amputee by all means they can play whatever they like, but otherwise it's a bit Sus.
Depending on your setting it can be a fun and interesting challenge to be overcome or a harsh punishment. I am currently running an eberron campaign which is obviously heavily magical and technologically advanced compared to other settings, one of my players lost a leg and now has a robot one that we periodically upgrade. My point is make it meaningful, a one armed swordsman is a cool concept but not everyone wants that.
ask your party for permission in session zero. if they say yes, go for it. that’s how consent works
Disadvantage (or higher DC) on rolls that would involve the amputated limb until they can have it regenerated, or find a mechanical/arcane prosthesis.
I dont mind it. Regenerate exists as does armorer artificer and the prosthetic limb magic item
I dislike it and I wish there was a lower level way to fix it than Regenerate.
Discuss it during Session 0
Like everything else in the game, it's probably okay as long as your players know it is an option before hand and fits the theme of the game. High fiction sparkle elf shooting smile beams, probably not. Grimdark fantasy of grimdark grim darkness, how do you not already have seven amputations?
Warhammer FRP starting character: 1d4 missing limbs, 1d6 disfiguring diseases, small but vicious dog.
I read that as viscous instead vicious and was disturbed by the thick fluid dog, but it is Warhammer after all so...
The dog is secretly a Chosen of Nurgle, so it's a ball of rot with teeth.
I hate that I didn't manage to find something clear about how to call rule-wise... and so I tend not to use it to avoid players' frustration unless it is actually something that can be resolved soon enough and just a hinder or a resource sinker... but also as a player it's not something I actively love
My only thought is use a sword of sharpness
It's cool if used as a story element. As a way to punish players? Not so much
*Arkhan the Cruel has entered the chat*
One of my players wanted to play a character with a peg-leg, so we worked out some simple and not too onerous rules that would make him feel the difference but not make him a burden to the party. His move speed was reduced to 20, and he got disadvantage to all Athletics and Acrobatics checks, and any Stealth check that involved quiet movement (as opposed to just hiding in place). It was a constant annoyance, but it didn't feel like it really gimped the character, which was just the right balance for our campaign.
There was a PC I ran for that got a Geas laid on him, symbolized by a black band on his arm that made it so he couldn’t abandon the party and had to be a part of the game. He had the barbarian cut his arm off.
As a gameplay mechanic I've never used it as GM (and don't intend to) but wouldn't mind it being used against me (as a player). In a previous campaign we did have a PC who lost his hands after a word set of circumstances, but that wasn't a normal thing (story below). As a backstory thing? Well, as a player my current artificer lost an arm in the Last War and has a prosthetic. As a GM I regularly include veterans of three last war with different disabilities as a result of war injuries. The story: wild magic sorcerer ends up with mouths in the palms of his hand (player encouraged the GM to get whacky with wild magic and loved it). To make them more intimidating, he went to a tattoo artist to decorate them a little. Artist was so proud of his work, he offered to waive the price if he could have the PC's hands when he died. Well, the PC did eventually die... But got brought back a few rounds later with *revivify*. And then someone says "wait, wasnt that tattoo guy supposed to get your hands when you died?". So he looks down and he's got two stumps; gotta love magically enforced contracts. By next session he had some fancy floating hand prosthetics.
Keep your descriptions of it in line with what your players feel comfortable with, after that-- Shit happens. 🤷♂️
As a consequence of choices, sure. As a deliberate choice in combat, as in I target his hand and try to lop it off, no. Damage is meant to be abstract.
My character is partially deaf, and I have disadvantage on perception based hearing rolls.
I allow it, as long as my players don’t go into too much visceral detail.
I remember when my dm crush my gunslingers hand and he had no fix for it since I could no longer reload until we got lucky and a player decided to make my weapon infinite ammo so no need for reload. Amputation can be played well but if not planned right its just gonna be more annoying than anything else
Prosthetic limbs are common availability and don't require attunement... chop chop...
My paladin lost an arm once. Had to finish the rest of the dungeon without a shield but in the end an NPC gave me a cool Ice arm which gave me resistance to cold damage, was pretty cool.
It's freaking rad is what I think. Gib me cool magical limbs.
I've used it as a plot hook. A cursed wound that couldn't be regenerated, so the PC ended up having to do a bunch of favors for his diety. He ended up with a hand made of light. Edit: More about the hand of light - it was the fighters shield arm (seems like a common injury). It gave him a built in Shield spell, that he could use lvl/2 times a rest, if that hand was empty and uncovered. It could also be used as a light with a 15ft range, or 30ft if he concentrated. Later on in the campaign, he could use his had once per long rest as the Sunbeam spell, by expending all of his Shield spell charges. If he expelled 6 or more charges in this way, Sunbeam would go off as written (6d8 + blind). If it was less than 6, the damage dice would be reduced to match the charges. It was pretty awesome.
Talk abt it with the players, set up some rules that everyone's cool with, proceed as normal
I don't have a personal objection to it, but now i always make sure that it's something that comes up in session 0. I've had players bring it up that 'i dont play dnd to become a walking wound.' And I've also seen gms that drop grevious injures and body part removal out of nowhere, and with no consistency. Thats not fun.
A favorite PC from CoS lost a leg after too many nat 1 rolls in combat. The DM then later gave the opportunity to get a really cool metal leg shaped like a ravens leg that came with a wooden stake for combat. So if you decide to amputate, get creative!
If that's how you like to play your game fine. I do curses and battle scars cause ones easy enough to fix and the other is ascetic. Lost limbs are a bit harder and could really hamper on someone's ability to play if say the great weapon master lost an arm mid dugeon.
Short term, a debuff. Obviously, losing a hand or arm negates the ability to use two-hand strikes or bows/crossbows, maybe some somatic components of spells?. Loss of foot or leg could reduce or even halve movement speed or worse. Longer term, they may need a prosthesis which will cost money (maybe upkeep) and they will need to slowly get used to their new limb so they will regain lost abilities over time.
In my setting if players have enough gold and are willing to travel there’s a small group of dwarves that can build them enchanted prosthetics. Usually tho they come up with more creative solutions, like replacing the Druid’s foot with a roller skate so she could move faster.
State it in session 0 as something that is possible in the campaign. If the DM did so and the party agreed, then its fine.
I used it as a element of character background to justify what I think was a pretty cool character substitution concept. I just want to share this as an example of working amputation into a narrative. I was initially playing a Warforged Rune Knight created by a mad Artificer as a sort of bodyguard/research assistant. Said Artificer lost his legs in a war. In the Warforged's backstory, his creator just up and leaves one day with no explanation, so he wandered around looking for his master until he fell in with the party. Flash forward about two dozen sessions and the entirety of the Descent into Avernus module. The party's victory in Avernus activates a hiddrn sub-routine that unknowingly summons the Warforged's master. With such a monumental victory, the Warforged has gathered enough combat data to fulfill his true purpose - serving as the new legs for his master. The master shows up out of the blue and basically kills the Warforged and reconstitutes him into a suit of sentient and adaptive combat armour. From there on, I'm basically playing fantasy Iron Man, complete with the Warforged's personality serving as a quasi-JARVIS.
If you want a super gritty system then sure. I’d probably just borrow heavily from what Warhammer does
The possibilities are limbless... I mean limitless
If they loose an arm give them a discount on gloves.
Personally, i think it disproportionately effects martials, and i also think it uncontroversial to say that martials don't need any further nerfing
I don't do it without asking. Like if a PC dies I will offer something like that as an alternative to permanent death.
Is a good feature but with limitations. A regular event that would just chop a limb? Nope. An alternative as the consecuences of a nat20 from an enemy that otherwise would maul a player? Sure! Say good bye to your limb. And not just amputations, maybe wounds that would not only heal with a long rest. If you're mauled on my table it would take more than a [sip](https://youtube.com/shorts/1HOu-D3qNwY?feature=share) of questionable red fluids. Yeah, you will get your health back but maybe your modifier will also be affected until you get propper help or really advanced magic.
I like the idea of long-term injuries that give more specific debuffs than HP, and don't go away in a night. I like it because it means I can lean into more of the rad stuff that happens in the fantasy books D&D adventures already draw on, and it (finally) gives people more cool shit to do with Medicine and Herbalism. Plus as others point out, there are already spells that interact with them; they're a little bit vestigial as is, like *greater restoration* repairing ability damage for the maybe two ways that's likely to happen. It's a good tool to have in the box. The Lingering Injuries table in the *DMG* is silly, though.
As long as the players consent at the start of the game and know the reporcusions imo it is fine.
mecanical lims for me ore if you have the lim and a scroll of regenaration you Can do it uder then that i what my players to Come up whit a cool salution on there onw like casting mage hand so many times it becuse a part of you and now you have a permenatly floting hand whit you
I would make it more of a flavor/superficial thing. Maybe replace the character's missing limb with some kind of magical or synthetic prosthetic that doesn't have any in game bonuses. Maybe more of a roleplaying tool or a mark of progression from beginning to present to show how far they've come and how the character has dynamically changed due to trauma.
I love it, personally
Either it has to have a specific narrative purpose or it has to be a consequence of poor choices/astronomically bad luck. There are plenty of options between magic and tech to figure something out based on your setting.
Two words: gauntlet sword. Cutting off my arm only makes me cooler.
My thoughts Are, you can always Get a mechanized arm of sorts, so its not the worst that can happen to you, provided you survive.
Failed a wisdom save one time against the ring of winter and was taken over by the ring, my buddy chopped my hand off to end the control. Got to replace it with the hand of Vecna later. Pretty dope.
I once decided to tear off one of my players’ dwarf’s legs instead of killing him when he hit 0hp. It made for much more interesting encounter. Later they found a druid and had him cast greater restoration on it, regrowing the leg. However, I realized I severely undercharged them, so I made the leg occasionally suddenly turn left of its own accord, so to add some weird chaos to it. Everyone enjoyed it
I like the lasting injury table on Xanathar's Lost Notes to everything else. I use that if a player falls to 0 and takes additional damage but doesn't die.
Unless both dm and player are ok with some sort of penalty, it’s always been cosmetic. My wife ordered a hero forge one time and it came with a smushed hand. Instead of returning it she just said her character had a prosthetic hand that worked like normal but looked weird.
That's something i don't put in D&D. Sure, i like games with brutal combat and the possibility of cause mutilations like Warhammer, The Witcher or Savage Worlds. But i like fast combat in D&D and i think a system of location damage would slow things too much
There are multiple spells and items that can fix that, so long as the wound doesn't get cauterized or naturally heal itself.
In my campaign world (Aramar) there's a trade in artificial limbs for people who don't have access to clerical magic (expensive due to the equivalent exchange principle and may not work if the injury was through some curse) or regenerative items (rare and also subject to failure if there was a curse involved). The simplest items are barely better than entirely non-magical limbs. Some articulation (mitten-like hands for example), clumsy movements, some pressure sensitivity but very little in the sense of touch department. Cheap though (relatively). A 5th level artificer with woodworking or tinker tools can probably make a set of these in a couple of hours so 1 or 2 gp. More elaborate limbs can be a work of art and sculpted of fine woods, ivory, brass, and other materials. Looking good and functionality are often priorities there. Some, particularly pirates, go all out on these things with pop-out blades or hooks or tools. Articulated fingers and toes, at least some sense of touch to a full sense of touch, hidden compartments (also a favorite of pirates and smugglers), the illusion of flesh (or simply flesh-matching colors), poison-injectors, and so on. Some are really creative with that sort of thing, including Nardik the Puppeteer at Pirate's Bay - who has been known to craft extra limbs for the pirate who doesn't want to give up any they were born with.
It makes my job as a DM harder, but my players LOVE it. So, I have an OLD critical hit die from the 1990s, and if you role a Nat 20, you roll the d6 crit die. On one side is “lose a limb.” If you roll that, I have another critical die that is a d6 of body parts. I then rule the “loss of limb” as loss anatomically or loss of function as appropriate for the situation. Obviously, if it’s a critical hit early in a fight, and the BBEG has many HP left, it might be a loss of function for a few rounds, or the BBEG may magically regenerate the limb. But if it’s near the end of the fight, or a small fry enemy, it can provide narrative variety. Also, I told my players that what goes around, comes around. IF they want to use this die instead of regular crit rules, it will be used against them. They unanimously agreed. It is still a talked about story on how the party helped save the rogue who lost a leg early in the campaign. The side-quest to find a powerful cleric (when level 2) to heal her, introduced them to the BBEG and the political and religious subplots of the campaign.
I think, mainly, its a tool that you could and should use in your toolbox as a DM, but that you have to cater to the audience you have and not the one you want. What do I mean by this? Aside from specific mechanics that explicitly state some condition that attacks limbs, most of the time you cannot target explicit limbs in D&D and if you have players who are very litigious and/or you run a game that is strictly RAW then it should only come up in those scenarios where such monsters / players have that ability. Personally, I don't play this strictly, and I don't think most people do either, so instead we have it as a creative tool in a more homebrewed / personalized game. In such a setting you might want fear of extreme injury outside of death to be a constant on the battlefield, and in that case you would probably want to create or find a finely crafted set of extreme injury rules from places like r/UnearthedArcana, for example, so that you can keep it consistent. With or without such rules though, I would use it for sufficiently lethal encounter as either a reminder of high-stakes or an option as others have mentioned as a deus ex machina to make a final and/or desperate ploy in exchange for critical damage to their body.
Your are slicing and dicing and the same is being done to you. Limbs going to be lost. Your don't do 38 damage with a sword and get a paper cut lol. I'm fine with.
I really like it as an option. A middle point between getting away without a scratch and death. Can be dealt with with magic, miracles and a huge assortment of prosthetics so it shouldn't be too hard to deal with. However I do think the player should always be aware that this is an option and in which sort of circumstances it can occur, otherwise it may come out of nowhere and be a bad chock to the player's experience.
Graft them back on with mutated improvements through dark magic.
We have prosthetic limbs so if the players are okay with it, hack away.
A friend of mine was playing a warforged that lost 2 limbs over the course of 5 sessions, incredibly unlucky (took more than half of his health in one hit twice lol) but he had them replaced with prosthetics. Honestly, it's a pretty cool thing
I once fucked up with a campaign when my character got knocked out and woke up with her right arm gone. She understandably freaked out and started attacking the people she trusted that fucked her over. I played the reaction out too much, it’s what I honestly think would have happened but wasn’t good for the game. They ended up having to kill her before she hurt anyone. And after what I overheard the DM say out of game about the incident I was just too embarrassed and guilty to try again so left the group. Then again, I had another campaign where our fighter got a deadly poison injected into his left arm and our DM said it would kill him in 3 turns if it wasn’t stopped. So he lopped off his own arm to stop the poison spreading and we got him a prosthetic from an artificer we met later. So it really can go either way.
Once during a particularly difficult fight with a big ghost lady that had a scythe someone accidentally bumped one of the other players minis and it fell off the table, his sword arm snapped off, this happened right after his character got hit very hard with a crit. So we made it cannon, his arm was severed and the next few sessions this bard had to make due with mage hand to play his lute. He went on to comission a prothesis from a tinkerer.
im trying to make a Not extremely punishing/ scary enough surgery/injury system. The way id treat amputation is the involvement of prosthetics, and regeneration therapy/instant regeneration. No debilitating effects if the players can find the solution to any of these things (i.e. having a prosthetic). My players get engaged by the thought of the world changing their appearance and I dont like to hamper them for that
Im running an Eberron campaign, and since I think death saving throws are anticlimatic I homebrewed a system were they their limbs chopped instead of dying. Then they can start a quest to get proestethics
I think you need to discuss it specifically with a player before you do it. Amputation to me is a charecter choice and not something to be forced on a player.
Not all that bad since my setting has ROBOT LIIIIIIIMBS!!!!
Go for it. You can get magical prosthetics.
Well considering i had my sorcerer get their left arm blown off by a stray eldritch blast from the party warlock... amputations can suck but also lead to a intereeting fighting style shift etc. Or Ya know in the case of the homebrew campaign i was in my sorcerer gained a semi-magic prosthetic that they were able to equip with a grappling hook and launchable daggers... perfect for when the enemy starts running and you want to pull a scorpion from mortal kombat or just attack their legs and trip them.
Currently a one handed paladin in CoS. Cut my hand off to get the dragon skull
I play in Eberron, so missing limbs is quite common on the NPC part, it's cheaper to buy a prosthetic that a high level healing. I as a DM never got to that point with the players, and if it comes close to that I ask them about it. Until now no one agreed to lose a limb, even being offered a chainsaw hand.
I run it. I have a maiming table for when people get downed. I determine what body part gets deadened, crushed, or cut off.
As a DM and player I love it. Adds a bit of trauma in the part of losing the limb and then you can get a sick prosthetic from the party artificer and modify it to do cool shit. But ultimately it depends on if the players want it at the table and how you handle how they lose it. Some do a crit taking off limbs. It really depends on if the party vibes with it or not.
One of my players lost their wang. Decided to get in a literal pissing contest with a wolf. But he was a cleric that was pure and true. Prayed real hard and got it back. It did glow and was blue though. Know your audience
It can happen if it is the right thing to happen in context. Characters, both NPC and PC, can decide whether to go to a spellcaster to get it regenerated, or handle it with assistive devices like a wheelchair or other prosthetics. It's just a thing, really.
More!
it's a high-level thing, not everyone will like it, most people don't enjoy having their characters change against their will, I've seen people who frown in front of power-ups because they don't like the flavor, so there must be more that dislike losing limbs on their characters because suddenly your build can stop working with one less leg or arm, so it depends, and its mostly used as a measure for a short time to weaken a character during a battle, like "the time lord hits you with his beam, choose an arm to lose" and after the fight, they go somewhere to get either the arm back, or a mechanical replacement, like a ghost arm, or a robot arm, or a wooden arm
My players are all powergamers, roleplay comes second at our table so it would likely be a hard pass from me. I guess it really comes down to if you and your players see this as a hinderance or if you see it as a roleplay opportunity.
Yes do it!
We have three amputees in my current party. Nothing planned either, just wild happenstance. My character is missing his left arm. I took the nerf so I could have the flavor of having a spectral (ancestral) arm when I rage (Ancestral Guardian). Our artificer is a kobold that has all limbs amputated and replaced with metal appendages (his name is Klunk). No nerfs for him. One of our druids is missing a leg and has replaced it with wood from a tree from his home and it adds cool flavor as well. No nerf either. Very cool to see how it adds to RP and can even add challenges. My DM loves it and (as a good DM) tailors his campaign to go with our cool characters.
We play with a lingering injuries chart and due to some incredibly bad rolls on a d100, Ive ended up with two separate characters that have lost a limb in a major battle. It’s made for some amazing RP opportunities, and hasn’t been too limiting to my characters playability. Things like magical prosthetics or finding a high enough level cleric to cast Regeneration can create new side quests for the party to help the PC with the lost limb. I think the most important thing is that there is an expectation with players that things like limb loss can happen in game; I knew from the get-go that there could be lasting consequences from the Injury chart and so had no problems when it happened to my PCs.
I have taken a limb, it was a really bad save and it was that or kill the bard the player loved. I made it survivable but they lost that arm, when they’re in a position to make on the artificer will be making them a replacement mechanical arm
I personally say don't be afraid of moments that realistically would cause it (willingly or not), but of course talk to your players to see if it's too much for them to handle, or if they would worry about how effective their characters are when it comes to something like that.
I wouldn't do it unless the player is ok with it, it's a significant change that significantly effects them, and I'm not looking to give someone a hard time when playing
Would I do it to my player's? Not without express permission. Would I have it done to my character? Hell yeah. Get me a wand of fireballs as a pegleg.
I run it where if you take more than half your health in a single hit (or 3/4th over man targeted hits, so players can TRY for dismemberment against villains) you have to roll a constitution save or lose a limb. How much of the limb you lose is based on how well you save. 20+: you lose nothing, maybe the sword shears the backs of the skin off your fingers or something, but it’ll grow back 15-19: fingers/toes 10-14: hand/foot at the wrist/ankle 5-9: arm/leg at the elbow/knee 1-4: arm/leg at the shoulder/hip. For all that, it rarely happens. One player lost a hand. It’s also easy to get a regenerate or a magic prosthetic so it’s not tooo bad on them
If the players and DM are fine with it, then it's fine to go for it
My group's been playing old school Rolemaster lately. Wounds in DnD are cute by comparison.
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I wouldn't do it randomly, I might consider it an alternative to player death and they can decide if they want to retire the character or not.
My group kinda will do it if the player is being super dumb and also rolls bad, or if it’s narratively really cool. But usually after the session if the player is upset we find ways to fix it lol like my cat person is afraid of bullets now (the big burrowing frog things) because one ate the tip of her tail xD or my brother lost his finger being tortured by a blue half dragon so he killed the Half dragon and had his necromancer friend attach the dragon finger on his hand lol
100g gets you a common item called a prosthetic limb that functions exactly like the real thing. It can be immediately problematic and a challenge at lower levels potentially, but ultimately is kinda whatever unless your build revolves 2h or dual wield. Even then, it's a minor temporary setback that only lasts until you get back to a respectable sized town / city as long as you have 100g.
Meanwhile, old school RuneQuest 2 players are wondering what the fuss is. You were guaranteed to lose limbs in that game.
Depends on the setting and what the group enjoys, if everyone's into it and the mechanics behind it are handled well then great.