How do you guys go about loss of limbs in D&D? Is there

I go off of the AD&D 2e spell "Break Limb" (it was a spell introduced in the Ravenloft setting, and later put into the Priests' Spell Compendium). That spell causes 1d10 damage for snapping the limb completely in half.

As for bleeding damage for a lost limb, I would make it little to none. Two reasons for that: one, it makes it that much more likely that you're gonna have a player die, which is totally fine, but players should always feel like they had some sort of say in their death. And second, the body is hardwired to deal with amputated limbs. Often times, when a limb is completely severed from the body, the blood vessels spasm, retract, and close themselves off so that you don't bleed out. In some cases, this doesn't happen, but being that the characters are supposed to be the "heroes" (and for the sake of simplicity within the rules), I'd rule it that they don't take bleed damage, since from that point they'd be bleeding no more than a regular sword-fight wound, which normally wouldn't bleed more HP from them in D&D rules.

That's my take on it anyhow. Hope this helps!

First ask yourself: How will PCs be able to replace lost limbs ?

Because, without options to replace lost limbs, a lost limb is such a big deal that many players will want to roll up a new character instead of playing the crippled one.

Oh and if you're thinking that you'll just make the players keep playing the crippled PC, that just makes the situation worse. You will get players breaking character because they want their PC to die so they can replace it.

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>>53665624
>How do you guys go about loss of limbs in D&D?
I don't. If I wanted to, I'd play Harnmaster instead which has amputation rolls out-of-the-box.

>>53665873
this unfortunately. Playing a crippled character is not fun unless it really fits in with the narrative and everyone is on board with it.

For hands and arms, take the Nethack approach. If a character has lost the use of both hands, it is considered a "major trouble" and thus is almost always likely for divine intervention if they pray for it and haven't pissed off their god. Otherwise there exist magical ways to restore ability to hands and arms. In Nethack a common way to lose the ability to use one's hands for new players was to wield a cursed two handed weapon, as cursed weapons fused themelves to character's hands and prevented any action except those that used a weapon. A one handed cursed weapon was a nuisance, but a two handed cursed weapon was a big problem. Another way was to be polymorphed into a creature with no arms.

For legs take the EYE Divine Cybermancy approach. Your legs get broken sometimes, greatly impacting ability, but you can treat them when you get a chance to rest and they are OK. They will never be permanently lost.

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D&D is not really a good system for limb loss due to the fact HP is intended to be abstract.

If you want to do critical injuries, I would suggest instituting some sort of mortal wounds subsystem where a character that is reduced to 0 HP or less rolls on a table instead of dying (thus giving a character a chance to survive death at the cost of a potentially career-ending injury).

>>53665624
I don't run HP as meat points so I save grievous injury for brutal damage that drops a PC below 1 HP. Usually this will mean a scar a lasting wound that might effect an attribute. Delimbing is pretty drastic stuff so I'll only go there if I know the player can handle it.

>>53665624
Severed limb becomes henchman with -1 loyalty. New limb grows back in 1d4+2 months, consult the reincarnation table to see what creature it is from.

>>53665624
With basicly no other kinds of permanent damage in D&D I would say thet D&D is not the system to do this in.

>>53667807
I like this chart

OP, as for short term injuries, blood loss from arterial bleeding stops a minute or so after a seriously traumatic injury due to shock and muscle wall contraction. Basically your limbs stop getting blood so the important shit can keep ticking (brain, lungs and heart). Shock is good on the short term, but if a person is unconcious (which shock usually causes as soon as the adrenaline response stops) then the shock can progress, shutting down "less critical" organs one by one until you run out of fuel from your digestion system shutting off or you bleed to death from venous bleeding.

But if a person is, for example, truncated cleanly, death can occur in minutes without proper medical aid. I've had the pleasure of dealing with patients in shock, with radial and distal limbs missing, and the mechanism of injury is usually a good indicator of how long someone dying of blood loss is gonna make it. Had a guy with a slice to his brachial artery go into shock, and after we gave him oxygen he actually had his bleeding increase because his blood vessels stopped constricting. We stopped the bleeding but he lost probably a pint before we had it under control the second time. I've been a Level 3 first aid attendant for almost 25 years and it was the first time I had a patient lose so much blood so far into transit, we'd been in route for almost an hour and a half before he came out of shock and the bleeding started again.

>>53667197
Same here, except I play Hackmaster which has the occasional limb loss or attribute loss for really high severity crits.

>>53665624

You should really use a different system for that.

>>53665624
>How do you guys go about loss of limbs in D&D?


I simply don't do it unless a spell or item ability specifically states it.

PF has two options for this, one a variant rule for massive damage, the other third party content. The official variant changes massive damage, adding a battle damage roll.

d20 Battle Scar or Amputation
1-5 Minor scar—interesting but otherwise cosmetic
6-8 Moderate scar—cut on face (+1 bonus on Charisma-based skill checks for first scar only, consider subsequent cuts as a major scar)
9-10 Major scar—severe cut on face (-1 penalty on Charisma-based skill checks**)
11-14 Loss of finger (for every 3 fingers lost, -1 Dex)
15-16 Impressive wound (-1 Con)
17 Loss of eye (-4 penalty on all sight-based Perception checks)
18 Loss of leg (speed reduced to half, cannot charge)
19 Loss of hand (cannot use two-handed items*)
20 Loss of arm (-1 Str, cannot use two-handed items*)

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/3rd-party-feats/4-winds-fantasy-gaming/combat-feats/improved-sever-combat
>SEVER COMBAT MANEUVER

>You can attempt to sever an arm, foot, hand, or leg at the joint as part of an attack action in place of a melee attack. Normally you cannot sever other limbs than those four extremities, but your GM may deem some special limbs fragile enough to qualify (a wing, for example).

>If you do not have the Improved Sever feat, or a similar ability, attempting to sever an item provokes an attack of opportunity from the target of your maneuver. Declare which limb you are targeting before your combat maneuver roll. If your attack is successful, you sever the targeted limb. Your opponent can make a Fortitude save (DC equal to your combat maneuver roll) to ignore the effect. Although horrific, the mind blocks out the pain of losing a limb. This attack deals no damage. The penalties for losing limbs are outlined here.

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/other-rules/variant-rules-3rd-party/4-winds-fantasy-gaming/The-Loss-of-a-Body-Part/
Has the effects for what happens when you lose a limb. Penalties to various scores, reduced carry capacity, loss of certain actions.

>>53671372
An addition to these two option, there is also the crit deck, a set of cards which you can pull from when performing a critical, instead of just doing more damage. Several of the cards involve loss of limbs, among other effects.

And after a bit more googling and looking round the SRD, there is apparently more variant rules, this time for Called Shots. http://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/other-rules/called-shots

>>53665624
In my 5e game I have been using the injury table. Two of my players have one completely useless leg, one was damaged heavily by a necrotic spell that made it numb and useless and the other took a fire ray to the knee causing horrible damage to the area. The result is the same, the move at half speed and can't dash without falling over - they also need a crutch or prosthesis to walk.

It doesn't affect their HP total, it just makes their life harder.

>>53665624
I play 5e, and some of my players really don't like the idea of their characters dying and having to make a new one, to the point where they say they'd rather quit than make a new character.
I don't want to have to pull punches running encounters for them, so instead I give each player a choice: when their character dies, they get a choice - they can either have them die and roll a new one, or they can roll on the lasting injuries table.
The only other time I'd do it is narratively, I wouldn't drop it into combat.

>>53665873
People dont even want to roleplay as some one missing a limb ;_;

>>53665624
Our DM has recently had us fighting these weird eldritch squid satyr looking aliens with weapons that have a chance to cut off a limb when they do high damage. So far there hasn't been a single fight with them where someone didn't lose a limb. Fortunately it's a sci fi setting so robot arms aplenty, and even more fortunately, the character i'm playing is almost completely robotic so he can usually reattach whatever gets cut off no problem.

Just play GURPS instead.

>>53665624
Critical hits, and which limb/appendage is lost is determined by rolling a d100 on a table I built.
Damage vs maximum hp also plays a factor, as well as the type of damage (slashing/piercing/etc).

Let's say that the one getting crit-hitted is an orc barbarian with 100 HP. If he gets hit by a crit, and the roll says it hit his left arm, but somehow the enemy was so weak that it only did 10 damage... He only loses two fingers.
Now, if it was a really strong enemy, and the crit resulted in 70 damage, he loses the whole arm from the shoulder and below.
If it was a blunt weapon, it would break his bones rather than cut away limbs. If it was piercing, it would impale. And so goes on.

>>53671865
Shut up, nubby.

>>53665873
It's DnD. Major Restoration is a thing.