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Endurance Rule

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Endurance Rule Empty Endurance Rule

Post  Admin Thu Jan 22, 2009 1:09 am

ENDURANCE RULE

Application
The Endurance Rule is an additional rule for 4th edition Dungeons & Dragons. This rule is a playtest rule; enough of the rule is presented to use it during games, but it is not finalized and many of the details of its use are not decided.

Description
Under the original 4th edition D&D rules, when a monster takes damage, he loses hit points, but the damage has no actual effect on the monster until he loses all of his hit points. With the Endurance Rule, this is no longer the case. When a damaged monster engages in combat, he loses more hit points. In order to fight at full effectiveness despite his injuries, the monster is pushing himself, and tiring himself out. You can also envision the special effect being that the monster is exacerbating his injuries, or bleeding. Once the monster is totally exhausted, he can still fight, but only with minimal effectiveness.

Rules
The endurance rule applies only to monsters, not to PC’s. In order to make easy use of the endurance rule, you should keep track of how much damage each monster has taken, rather than keeping track of how many hit points are remaining.

At the end of any round during which the monster made an attack or performed a combat-oriented standard action, the monster suffers endurance damage. This damage is equal to ¼ of the total amount of normal (non-endurance) damage the monster has suffered. Endurance damage does not count for determining whether the monster is bloodied, so it is easiest to keep separate tallies for normal and for endurance damage, then add them together to determine whether the monster is defeated. So if a previously undamaged monster takes 32 points of damage in a round, he suffers 8 points of damage at the end of his round. If he then is hit for 12 more points of damage, he will have suffered 44 normal and 8 endurance damage, and will suffer 11 more endurance damage at the end of his next round.

To compensate for the endurance rule disadvantage, each monster receives (as part of the monster design) additional endurance hit points equal to ¼ of the listed hit points. These hit points work exactly like normal hit points, but they do not change the amount of damage required to bloody the monster. So a monster who is listed in the monster manual as having 80 hit points now has 100 hit points, but it takes only 40 hit points to bloody the monster. So following the previous example, if the monster has taken 44 normal and 19 endurance damage, he is bloodied due to the normal damage being >= 40. If the monster takes another hit for 37+ points of damage, he will be killed.

If a monster takes enough endurance damage at the end of the round to kill him, he is not dead. Instead, he becomes totally exhausted (see below).

If a monster is not yet totally exahusted, but has taken enough damage that he will become totally exhausted at the end of his next round, he is treated as being weakened.

A monster which is totally exhausted is treated just like a minion – he has one hit point and is killed by any damage, but cannot be damaged by attacks which miss. His base statistics are the same, but he loses all special powers and abilities which a minion of that monster type would not have, and causes a small fixed amount of damage on a hit (half or less of the monster’s average normal basic attack damage). The powers a monster has while totally exhausted are part of the monster design, meaning they would be published with the rest of the monster’s statistics if this were an official rule.

If any monster is killed by damage which could not kill a minion (i.e. miss damage), that monster is totally exhausted instead.

If a monster is healed, normal damage is healed before exhaustion damage.

Fractions are rounded to the nearest number, ½ is rounded up.

Rule Variations
The fraction of normal damage which becomes exhaustion damage, and the fraction of normal max hit points which are added as exhaustion hit points, can be changed without damaging the essential structure of the rule. These two fractions do not have to be equal to one another.

The method of rounding fractions can be changed if you like, it isn’t that important.

Full Example
A Human Guard normally has 47 hit points; he gains 12 endurance hit points and thus starts with 59 total. He is hit early for 9 points of damage. On his turn he attacks, and suffers 2 endurance damage. Next round he is hit for 16 points of damage; he has now taken 25 normal damage and is bloodied. On his turn he takes 6 more endurance damage, 8 total. Next turn he is hit for 8 points of damage (33 total normal damage) but is unable to attack, so he suffers no endurance damage. Next round he is not hit, then attacks and suffers 8 more endurance damage (16 total). He is then hit for 7 more points of damage, 40 total normal damage and 16 endurance damage. He is now weakened. His next attack does half damage, and after that he is totally exhausted. Now any hit will kill him, and he does only 4 damage and cannot mark or knock foes prone.

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