BASIC RULES	Threshold of pain	Effects of wounds	Healing of wounds	-
ADVANCED RULES	Wound location		-	-
-	-	-	Dragon 118	Dragon

The Hole was quiet.
Its heavy, semi-circular doors lay closed; almost horizontal on the low, flat knoll, pieces of its corroded lock scattered across the ground nearby.

One of the doors opened suddenly,
pushed upwards from below. An armored
figure crawled out painfully, blood drip-
ping through the rent chain armor on its
right leg. A dull roar followed from deeper
within the Hole.

Aan quickly pushed the door shut and
leaned heavily on it, forcing the latch back
into place. He had been foolish to try to
recapture the church’s treasure alone, and
now he would pay for his lack of wisdom.
The lock had not slowed him at all when
he had entered the Hole two days ago. He
cursed the remaining useless splinters of
metal around him and slipped his thick-
bladed sword through the latch, then
crawled to a tree and leaned against it,
clutching his mutilated leg.

The roars had subsided to grunts, but
now Aan could hear the beast directly
beneath the doors. The doors shuddered,
straining against the bloody sword stuck <>
through the latch. Aan watched the sword
bend and shatter. The doors flew open.
The beast emerged.

Aan tried to stand, but the pain in his leg
burned hotter, and he fell back against the
tree. The beast approached slowly.

 But that can't happen in AD&D games.
it seems strange that a medieval sword-
and-sorcery role-playing system, under-
standably more than a bit involved  in
blood-and-guts violence and combat,
would have no method of dealing with the
pain and other effects of a character’s
physical wounds (it certainly cannot be
pleasant to have one’s leg clawed open);
yet, other than the vague effects of the
symbol of pain spell, AD&D gaming has no
pain system and no way to simulate
wounds. Even Loviatar, the Maiden of
Pain, can cause ‘only a memory of pain.
The following system, with advanced
and optional rules outlined afterwards,
simulates wounds and the effects of pain.

Basic Rules
Basically, a wound of sufficient severity
should cause pain (as well as actual mechanical damage to the working parts of
the body) that affects a character’s
performance.

Threshold of pain
First, the DM must prepare a new statis-
tic for each character:

the threshold of pain.
This statistic, a %percentage% of the character’s total HP, provides a measure of how severe a wound a character can sustain without suffering adverse effects.

If any one attack (or any other
factor that causes similar loss of HP)
does damage exceeding the character’s
threshold of pain, the character suffers
the effects of a painful wound.
Race && CON determine the character’s threshold of pain.
Use Tables 1, 2, and 3.

<seems to be missing a column for high elves>

TABLE 1
THRESHOLD OF PAIN FOR DWARVES AND ELVES
                                                                     DWARVES                                                                ELVES

Character's  CON	Gray	Hill	Mntn	Dark	Gray	Valley	Wild	Wood
6	-	-	-	7%	10%	8%	12%	12%
7	-	-	-	8%	11%	8%	12%	12%
8	-	-	-	9%	12%	9%	13%	13%
9	-	-	-	10%	12%	10%	14%	14%
10	-	-	-	11%	13%	11%	15%	15%
11	-	-	-	12%	14%	12%	15%	15%
12	17%	18%	18%	12%	15%	12%	16%	16%
13	18%	18%	19%	13%	15%	13%	16%	16%
14	18%	19%	19%	14%	16%	14%	17%	17%
15	19%	19%	20%	15%	16%	15%	17%	17%
16	19%	20%	20%	15%	17%	15%	17%	18%
17	20%	20%	20%	16%	17%	16%	18%	18%
18	20%	20%	20%	16%	17%	16%	18%	19%
19+	25%	26%	26%	-	-	-	-	-

TABLE 2

THRESHOLD OF PAIN FOR OTHER DEMI-HUMANS
 

Character's  CON	Deep <?>	Svrf	Half- elf	Hobbit	Half- ogre	Half- orc	Human
3	-	-	-	-	-	-	5%
4	-	-	-	-	-	-	6%
5	-	-	-	-	-	-	7%
6	-	-	10%	-	-	-	9%
7	-	-	11%	-	-	-	10%
8	13%	13%	12%	-	-	-	11%
9	13%	13%	22%	-	-	-	11%
10	14%	13%	13%	15%	-	-	12%
11	15%	14%	14%	16%	-	-	13%
12	16%	14%	15%	17%	-	-	14%
13	16%	15%	15%	17%	-	19%	14%
14	17%	16%	16%	18%	21%	20%	15%
15	17%	17%	16%	18%	22%	20%	15%
16	18%	18%	17%	19%	23%	21%	16%
17	18%	19%	17%	19%	24%	21%	16%
18	-	-	17%	19%	25%	21%	16%
19+	-	-	-	25%	-	27%	22%

Fighters, cavaliers, and monks receive modifiers for the threshold of pain because of special training unique to their classes and must recalculate the threshold of pain each
time they gain (or lose) levels of experience.
Note that some monks can almost ignore pain altogether.

TABLE 3
THRESHOLD OF PAIN MODIFIERS FOR FIGHTERS, CAVALIERS, AND MONKS
                                                                                                               CHARACTER'S EXPERIENCE LEVEL

Character  Class	0	1-3	4-5	6-7	8	9	10+
Cavalier	-	2%	3%	5%	8%	12%	17%
Paladin	-	3%	5%	7%	10%	13%	16%
Fighter	+0%	3%	6%	9%	12%	14%	16%
Barbarian	-	9%	10%	11%	12%	13%	14%
Ranger	-	1%	3%	6%	10%	15%	20%
Monk	-	10%	20%	30%	40%	50%	60%

Example: Aan is a Warder (P5) with a CON of 15; he therefore has a thresh-
old of pain of 20% (15% for CON + 5% as a 5th-level paladin).
He has 33 HP, so any wound causing less than 7 hp (20% × 33 hp = 6.6 hp) of damage does
not affect his performance.
Any blow that causes 7 hp of damage or more inflicts a wound upon Aan — obviously, the beast in the Hole has done that much damage and
more to the poor paladin’s right leg.
Characters should record on their character sheets both the percentage for the thresh-
old of pain and the amount of damage in HP that cause a wound (for Aan, figures
of 20% and 7 hp). Recalculate the amount of damage each time the character’s maximum
HP changes.

Effects of wounds
Each time a single attack against a char-
acter does damage exceeding the charac-
ter’s threshold of pain, the character
receives a wound. (In the basic pain sys-
tem, the location of the wound is unim-
portant; imagine the character’s wounds to
 be distributed evenly over his body.)

Record each wound and the amount of
damage on the character sheet.
According to the number of wounds that
a character has sustained, certain penal-
ties apply to the character’s performance:

The indicated penalties apply as long as
the character’s wounds remain unhealed,
and change as the character’s number of
wounds changes.

“Cripple” implies that the
character has lost his ability to stand un-
aided due to the horrible wounds on his
legs; until healed, such crippled characters
must use crutches, lean on companions, or
crawl.

Example: Cornered in his hall, a terrified
hermit strikes the elven thief Kelthy (29
hp, threshold of pain 14% and 4 hp), caus-
ing 15 hp damage and creating a wound.
Kelthy records “Wound 15” on her charac-
ter sheet and suffers the penalties of hit
and damage - 1/ - 1 and+ AC
- 1. Fleeing the hermit’s hall in terror, she
feels a flung dagger penetrate her lower
back, causing another 8 HP damage and
creating another wound; her character
sheet now reads “Wounds 15 and 8.” With
two wounds, she now has the penalties of
hit and damage -2/- 1, armor class - 1,
and movement rate - 1”.

TABLE 4
EFFECTS OF WOUNDS (BASIC RULES)

No. of Wounds (Basic Rules)	Hit and  damage	Armor  class	Movement  rate
1	-1/-1	-1	nil
2	-2/-1	-1	-1"
3	-2/-2	-2	-3"
4	-3/-3	-3	-5"
5+	-4/-4	-5	-8/cripple

Healing wounds
Wounds are temporary. Each time the
character regains hit points by any means
(including rest, spells or potions of healing,
wishes, etc.), divide the amount of hit points
regained equally among all the
character’s wounds and apply remaining
points to the oldest wounds. When a
wound has healed to a level below the
character’s threshold of pain, remove the
wound from the character sheet.

Example: Safe outside the hermit’s hall,
Kelthy drinks a potion of healing and
regains 6 HP. Three points each go to her
two wounds, and she updates her charac-
ter sheet to read “Wounds 12 and 5.” She
rests for three days, regaining 1 hp per
day (see DMG, p. 82); her wounds drop to
10 and 4. After another day of REST, the
knife wound in her back has healed to 3
hp (below her threshold of pain) and
ceases to cause its detrimental effects. She
suffers now only from the original wound,
healing at 1 HP per day.

ADVANCED Rules
 

Wound location	Advanced effects of wounds	Effects of head wounds	Effects of body wounds	Effects of leg wounds
Effect	-	-	-	-

For a more realistic (and consequently more complicated) system for simulating wounds, use the following advanced rules for wound location, ADVANCED effects of wounds, and overwhelming pain.

Wound location
In some cases, the physical location of a
wound on a character’s body is apparent
— a stab in the back, a bash on the head, a
chomp on the leg. In other cases, roll on
the wound location table. to determine
where the character has been hit.
Of course, a random wound location
might not fit the situation of the battle. An
unarmed kobold should not be able to
administera head wound to a 6’-tall
fighter, && a thief. crouching behind a low
wall should rarely receive a leg wound.
The DM must arbitrarily alter the location
of the wound as the game demands.
Factors other than combat (fire, falls,
poison, disease, etc.) can also cause dam-
age as painful as wounds inflicted in bat-
tle; therefore, any wounds falling into
these and similar categories create general
wounds as opposed to localized damage.

zb

TABLE 5
WOUNDS LOCATION TABLE

d100 roll	Location of wound
01-17	Head
18-40	Body
41-55	Right arm
56-70	Right leg
71-85	Left arm
86-00	Left leg

ADVANCED EFFECTS OF WOUNDS

In the basic rules, wounds are consid-
ered to be spread evenly across the char-
acter’s body; therefore, the effects of the
wounds are generalized.
In the ADVANCED RULES, wounds have precise locations and
specific effects.

Effects of head wounds: If the character is wearing a helmet,
he has a chance of reducing the damage of the wound by 25% for small helmets or 50% for great helms;
and if the damage falls below the character’s threshold of pain due to the protection of his helmet, he suffers no
head wound. If the character has no hel-
met or his helmet fails to reduce the dam-
age sufficiently, record a head wound for
the character.

There is a chance that a head wound
will knock a character unconscious; this
chance is equal to the amount of damage
sustained (after any applicable reduction
for a helmet is determined) divided by the
character’s maximum HP. Uncon-
sciousness lasts for a number of rounds
equal to the amount of damage of the
wound that caused the unconsciousness.
Some DMs might wish to impose blurred vision <(blur)> or ringing in the ears for multiple
or severe head wounds.

Example: A palace guard in the gnome king's
castle strikes Thammon (halfling
thief, constitution 10, 13 hp, threshold of
pain 15% and 2 hp) in the head from be-
hind, hoping to knock him out and capture
him (and thereby receive a promotion).
The guard does 3 hp of damage and deliv-
ers a head wound to Thammon, but not
enough to put the halfling out of action
(3/13 = 0.231 = 23% chance of uncon-
sciousness, DM rolls a 55 on d100). The
two small demi-humans roll for initiative
and Thammon strikes first — a vicious
blow of 7 hp to the guard’s head. The
guards great helm successfully protects
his tender gnome head, and the damage
drops to 4 hp. The guard’s threshold of
pain is 15% and 5 hp, thus the blow fails
even to create a wound. The guard strikes
back in anger, doing another 8 hp of dam-
age to Thammon’s already-throbbing head
(8/13 = 0.615 = 62% chance of uncon-
sciousness, DM rolls a 30 on d100). Subse-
quently, the thief falls at the guard’s feet.
The victorious gnome has 8 rounds to bind
his captive and summon help.

Effects of body wounds: Body wounds
count only toward overwhelming pain (see
below).

Effects of leg wounds: Due to the char-
acter’s impaired ability to maneuver in
melee, reaction/attacking and defensive
adjustments (see PH, p. 11,
Dexterity Table I) receive a -1 penalty per
leg wound. Also, the character’s move-
ment rate for all movement afoot receives
the following modifiers:

TABLE 6
 

Movement Rate Penalty for Leg Wounds
Wounds on Wounds on left leg
right leg 0 1 2 3 +
0 nil -1? -3?
-3?
-5? /cripple
1 -1? -5 -7? /cripple
2 -3? -5? -7? /cripple -9? /cripple
3 + -5? /cripple -7? /cripple -9? /cripple -12? /cripple

Table 6

Wounds on right leg	0	1	2	3+
0
1
2
3+

 
 

The basic rules for “crippled” characters
apply equally in the advanced rules.

Effects of arm wounds: Characters
should specify right-hand or left-hand
favor; characters with a high dexterity
have a possibility of being ambidextrous.
Because of the wounded character’s re-
duced ability to defend himself, each arm
wound incurs a defensive adjustment
penalty (see PH, p. 11,
Dexterity Table I) of-1, as well as hit and
damage penalties for the character’s melee
and missile fighting:

TABLE 7

Table 7
Hit and Damage Penalties for Arm Wounds
 
 

W o u n d s o n Wounds on secondary arm
primary arm 0 1 2 3+
Character wielding one-handed weapon with primary arm or ambidextrous character *
wielding 1-handed weapon
0 ? — - 1
1 - 1 - 1 - 1 - 2
2 - 2 - 2 - 2 - 3
3+ - 3 - 3 - 3 - 4/defense
Character wielding one-handed weapon with secondary arm
0 — - 2 - 3 - 4
1 — - 2 - 3 - 4
2 - 1 - 2 - 3 - 4/defense
3+ - 2 - 3 - 4/defense - 5/defense
Character wielding a two-handed weapon
0 - 1 - 2 - 3
1 - 1 - 2 - 3 - 4
2 -2 -3 - 4 - 6/defense
3 + - 3 - 4 -6/d efense -8/defense
Character wielding two weapons * *
0 — - 1 - 2 - 3
1 - 1 -3 -4 - 5
2 - 2 - 4 - 6 -7/defense
3+ - 3 - 5 -7/defense -9/defense
* Consider weapon arm as primary arm.
* * The indicated penalties apply in addition to the normal penalties for wielding two
weapons (see DMG, p. 70).

The indicated penalties apply to both “to
hit” and damage rolls in melee combat and
to “to hit” rolls in missile combat. “De-
fense” implies that the character has been
so badly wounded that he must roll less
than or equal to his CON score on
3d6 each round in order to attack that
round (the roll is not necessary for missile
combat).

Effect of general wounds: General
wounds, like body wounds, count only
toward overwhelming pain (see below).
Example: Kairin (gray elven magic-user,
30 hp, constitution 15, threshold of pain
15% and 5 hp) finds her encounter with
the evil Uul going tragically against her.
Her wounds are Head 7 and Right Leg 9.
Uul casts a fireball spell at Kairin, doing <cf. WSG.fireball>
8 hp damage and delivers a general wound
to her. Kairin realizes that she is out-
matched and seeks escape.
She dashes from Uul’s courtyard and falls into a concealed pit in the marble corridor, suffering
another 5 HP of damage and another gen-
 eral wound; her wounds are now Head 7,
Right Leg 9, General 8 and 5. Uul peers
into the pit and laughs at his helpless
opponent.

Overwhelming pain
Should a character receive a great num-
ber of painful wounds, he will be unable
to do anything but scream and moan in
agony until the wounds are healed or until
the character is put out of his misery. He
will be blind and deaf with pain, and thus
unable to defend himself; treat such char-
acters as “totally immobile” for hit deter-
mination (see DMG, p. 67). The number of
wounds necessary to create a state of
overwhelming pain depends upon the
character’s constitution score.

TABLE 8

Table 8
Number of Wounds Causing
Overwhelming Pain
Number of
Character?s wounds to cause
constitution overwhelming pain
3-15 4
16-17 5
18
19+
6
Immune to O.P.

Overwhelming pain has no effect on
characters reduced to zero hit points or
below or on characters rendered other-
wise unconscious.

Optional Rules

The following optional rules for specific
healing, avoided wounds, and pain for
mounts and monsters add even more
realism to the advanced rules.

Specific healing
In the basic rules, healing affects all
wounds equally. There are times, though,
when a character might wish to heal one
wound and not worry about another. With
specific healing, the character affects only
the wounds that he wants to heal.
Cure light/serious/critical wounds and
(limited)  wish spells provide specific heal;
ing. Magic items of similar  powers also
heal only the desired wounds, as do sub-
stances such as a salve of healing or other
similarly controllable means of regaining
lost hit points. The heal spell removes all
wounds and damage, and a periapt of
wound closure heals all wounds to one
point below the character’s threshold of
pain.

Avoided wounds
<correct this>
more capable of avoiding the wounds that
Sometimes loss of hit points in battle
comes not from wounds but from the
strain and exertion of fighting (see DMG,
p. 82). More experienced characters are
might otherwise have been caused by
their opponents’ successful hits; although
the victim suffers hit point loss, no serious
performance-affecting wounds occur. The
chance of avoiding wounds depends on
the character’s class and level; fighters,
cavaliers, and monks have the advantage
over other classes due to their training.
(Use Table 9 only when the damage from
an attack exceeds the character’s thresh-
old of pain and in an event where a
wound can occur.)
skill to twist away in time, and Jiai’s dag-
Example: Aan, confronted deep in the
tunnels of the evil Temple of Mar-Phu,
must fight to the death against the wicked
priestess Phulu Jiai (8th-level dark elven
cleric, 40 hp, constitution 13, threshold of
pain 13% and 5 hp). Aan swings his thick
sword at Jiai’s body and strikes for 9 hp
damage, enough to create a wound for
Jiai. As an 8th-level cleric, Jiai has a 12%
chance of avoiding a wound resulting
from the blow. She rolls a 66 on d100; the
blade slices cleanly through her skin (the
DM records “Body 9” on her NPC sheet).
Enraged, Jiai plunges her diamond dagger
through Aan’s breastplate and into his
chest, causing 10 hp damage. Aan has an
8% chance of avoiding the wound; he rolls
6 on d100. Aan loses 10 hp, but suffers no
wound (the dagger merely grazed his flesh
instead of puncturing a lung). Had Aan
been 3rd level, he would not have had the
ger would have caused a terrible wound
that could have hindered his performance.

TABLE 9

Table 9
Chance of Avoiding Wounds
Character
class
Cavalier
Paladin
Fighter
Barbarian
Ranger
Monk
Other classes
Experience level
0 1-3 4-5 6-7 8 9 10+
7% 15% 18% 21% 25% 30% 40%
na 5% 8% 12% 17% 23% 30%
5% 10% 15% 20% 30% 40% 50%
na 20% 22% 24% 26% 28% 30%
na 5% 10% 15% 20% 30% 45%
na 30% 35% 40% 45% 60% 80%
na 3% 6% 9% 12% 15% 20%

TABLE 10

Table 10
Thresholds of Pain for Mounts
Earthbound mounts
Donkey/mule: 40%
Draft horse: 10%
Horse, riding: 14% + d6%
0x:40%
Pony: 5%
Unicorn: 15%
Warhorse, light: 15%
Warhorse, medium: 20%
Warhorse, heavy: 30%
Wild horse: 25%
Flying mounts
Dragon horse: 20%
Griffon: 30% + d10%
Hippogriff: 25%
Nightmare: 40% + d20%
Pegasus: 15%
Peryton: 20%
Wyvern: 50%

Pain in mounts and monsters
Mounts can feel pain just as characters
can; if something wounds a mount too
badly, it will be unable to bear its-rider.
Mounts use the same pain rules that char-
acters use, although there are a few differ-
ences, as detailed below.

TABLE 11

Table 11
Wound Locations for Earthbound
Mounts
d100 roll Location of wound
01-17 Head
18-40 Body
41-55 Right foreleg
56-70 Right hindleg
71-85 Left foreleg
86-00 Left hindleg

TABLE 12

Table 12
Wound Locations for Flying
Mounts *
d100 roll Location of wound
01-18 Head
19-36 Body
37-43 Right foreleg
44-50 Right hindleg
51-57 Left foreleg
58-64 Left hindleg
65-82 Right wing
83-00 Left wing

* For wyverns and peryton, roll on Table
5 to determine the wound location for
earthbound mounts and substitute “wing”
for “foreleg”.

(1)
<type this section from the original>
If a mount  has wounds on two or more
legs or more than one wound on any leg,
or more than one wound on two different
legs, it is unable to walk at all.
it will be unable to support its rider. If a
mount has wounds on three or more legs

A wound on
the wing of a flying mount prevents it
from flying. (Optional rule: A flying mount
with a threshold of pain of 25% or more
can still fly with one wing wound, though
it is unable to bear its rider. Two wing
wounds ground the mount.)

Some DMs might wish to apply these
pain rules to monsters. With arbitrary
thresholds of pain (try 5% + 2% per hit
die) and wound location tables (if neces-
sary), almost any monster can feel the
effects of pain just as characters do. Some
monsters, because of their very nature,
are oblivious to pain (golems, undead,
elementals, etc.)

(2)
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