Thread: Healing Surge sub-system

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Think that death is too elusive in your 4e campaign? Well, there could be any number of reasons for this and they are too numerous to list here. I have created a quick cheat-sheet that I am hoping you will use and improve upon. It didn't take much time but I hope you see the value. As PCs spend healing surges, roll percentile to see if-and-what effects afflict them. This will help steepen the curve, especially if you have very strong PCs who are good at killing what you throw at them.

Oh, did I mention surge-management becomes more interesting? Also leader classes get a good boost in the "WE WANT A LEADER" category.

How to use: Column A ("Surges") represents the amount of surges a PC has remaining. As a PC uses surges, the more inclined they are to suffer an injury. Using the chart, roll percentile based on these figures to determine if the character suffers an injury. IF they do, consult the "% of Effect" column. Roll percentile again to determine the injury they suffer. This system is easy to customize for your own needs and is not meant to be perfect. Use it, change it, make it better. All I ask for is some credit! There is a link at the bottom to a simple HTML page that you can goto on your iPhone for easy reference.

Random Injury Chart

Surges	% of Injury		% of Effect	Effects
4	25%		1-15	-1 Movement (Save Ends)
5	20%		16-30	-1 Attack (Save Ends)
6	17%		31-45	-1 Reflex Defense (Save End)
7	14%		46-60	-1 Fortitude Defense (Save Ends)
8	13%		61-75	-1 Will Defense (Save Ends)
9	11%		76-90	-1 AC (Save Ends)
10	10%		91-93	Slowed (Save Ends)
11	9%		94-96%	Weakened (Save Ends)
12	8%		97-98	Dazed (Save Ends)
13	8%		99-00	Stunned (Save Ends)
14	7%
15	7%
16	6%
17	6%
18	6%
19	5%
20	5%

Random Injury Chart

Very interesting. Would hate to see what would happen to a Dwarf that had to burn through all surges in a mod.

On that note, perhaps the % of injury should go up slightly if they have to burn multiple surges at the same time (ie, out of combat while resting).

Also, let someone with a heal skill remove an effect (one at a time).

Short rests should probably be excluded from this. My original intent was to have it used while in combat. It's not a perfect system, just something to make things more interesting.

...I was also thinking this would work, thematically, if a player ever took damage equal to their surge value or more. Either way, it could work to bring things up to a more difficult standard.

A heinous twist on this idea:

Have an encounter where the BBEG corrupts the player's via a spell or environmental effect so that they suffer these effects when they attempt to use their healing surges. The difference would be there's no % roll for no injury (it will hurt you).

You could make it even tougher by including a 1-5% chance that the surge backfires and they lose more hit points equal to their surge value (nicked a vein or applied too much pressure, etc).