A DMing Trick: 'Tis But a Scratch!

One of the things that I have taken to doing when describing combats is to occasionally describe a specific injury that PCs have done to their opponents. For example, in a recent combat, the dwarf took a wing off one of the white dragons she was fighting.

Of course, the 3.5e rules don't actually give any scope for this: creatures have hit points same as PCs, and they're supposed to be unimpeded by raw damage until they reach 0.

But then, boiled right down D&D combat can be quite dull - the fighter and the monster square off, and they just proceed to trade Full Attack actions until one of them falls. And while 3.5e does allow for things like disarms, sunders, bull rushes, and trips, the truth is that those systems very rarely see use - the trade-off is too great unless a character is built specifically to use them (in which case, of course, he'll always use them, which isn't really any better).

I have a couple of guidelines I use:

• I only apply specific injuries to 'significant' monsters. In the example fight, I described a specific injury for the 100+ hit point dragon, but tended not to bother with the 25 hit point drow - there was little point. (Though, actually, I think there was one...)
• A specific injury tends to occur on a 'significant' blow - on a critical hit, or when the monster becomes "bloodied" (3.5e doesn't actually have the term, but it was a distinct improvement introduced in 4e. Basically, it means the monster hits half hit points).
• Because specific injuries are [i]extra[/i] effects, they are entirely under my control - PCs cannot attempt to cause one of these injuries. (Otherwise, I can see them spamming attacks on enemies' sword arms!)
• A specific injury has some (fairly minor) effect on the ongoing combat: the monster loses a movement mode, is slowed due to an injured foot, loses one of several natural attacks, or something like that.
• Specific injuries only ever apply to monsters. It's one thing for a giant to lose a limb - it's probably not going to be seen again. It's quite another for a PC to lose a limb, and thus be permanently hampered from that point onwards. Of course, games like Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay include specific injuries, and they can be quite good fun in their own right. But for me, for D&D, it's something I'd like to avoid.

Ultimately, what I'd like to see is more interesting events in combat. I'm inclined to drop some of the penalties associated with sunders, disarms, and the like so that they become more viable (and, at the same time, reduce the effectiveness of the "Improved..." feats). Indeed, I would like to introduce more scope for players to describe [i]their own[/i] special moves, rather than just picking from the pre-set four. (I'll need to dig out "The Book of Iron Might", which provides lots of guidelines for this.)

And I'd like to see some expansion of the options surrounding critical hits. At the moment, a crit is just a chance at extra damage. But what if, on scoring that nat-20, the player could decide that instead of going for the extra damage, he would instead attempt to disarm his foe (in addition to the normal damage of the attack). Indeed, there could well be a high-level feat/power (which I would call "Boom! Headshot!") where if the PC scores a threat he can go for the kill; on a confirmed crit, the target must then save or die.

(That would make the insta-kill happen on about 1% of attacks, which is rare enough to be fun and interesting, but common enough to be worthwhile. Given that the Wizard gets access to disintegrate at similar levels, I see no harm in also letting the Fighters have their save-or-dies.)

But at the moment, all of that is still work-in-progress.