I’ve been playing Dungeons and Dragons with a group of friends for years, but in our latest campaign we decided to try something different. Our DM added in the Trauma system from the Palladium-based Robotech RPG. What this meant for the story portion of the game was that when a player comes close to death (or actually dies, and is then raised/resurrected) they have to roll 1d20 – a roll of 1-8 (if your health drops below 0, but you are saved – otherwise a roll or 1-10 if you actually die and come back) means you then need to roll a percentile die (or, rather, 1d100 + 1d10) and match the result to the Trauma table from the Robotech player’s handbook.
I last night’s game, my character (a Lawful Good Paladin played to the tune of a Whitecloak from Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series) nearly died in combat. As such, I rolled a 1d20 with a result of 2. As such, I rolled the percentile and came with with a 5. From the Trauma Table (which I can’t reproduce here due to copyright restrictions), a 5 resulted in an Alignment Reversal. My Lawful Good Paladin became (after a short side trip) a Chaotic Evil Blackguard.
The Trauma Table doesn’t come in to play that often, but the result can be small (my friend Mike’s character can’t stand to be around music) or game changing.
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