Basic Information
This is a house rule I like to use in my campaigns. If a player's character takes damage in a manner which unrelated to the main plot and which is funny, it is ruled comedy damage, and does not need to be recorded by the player. It is the equivalent of a cartoon character appearing with bandages on his head after walking into a lamppost and then the bandages being gone in the next scene. Thus, if a character slips on a banana peel or gets clobbered by his jealous girlfriend, we can acknowlege that, yes, it hurt, but that he is not going to be penalized for whatever damage he might have sustained.
Sources
Game and Story Use
- An example:
- Bif the Barbarian makes a stealth roll as he approaches the top of a flight of stairs. He rolls a critical failure. The GM rules that he slips and falls down the stairs. Now, the GM could make a damage roll to determine how many points of ouch Bif takes; or he could just arbitrarily say, "You take X points of damage". Under the "comedy damage" rules, the GM describes him clattering down the stairs, with sound effects for each bounce, and perhaps appropriate yells and curses; then says "you take comedy damage".
- Comedy damage does not come into play during combat, or if the action that results in the damage is important to the plot.
- If Bif gets hit in the head with a mace by a goblin berserker in combat, he takes whatever damage is appropriate. If he gets hit in the head with a mace by his teammate Dolores because he commented that she was putting on weight, well, that could be comedy damage.
- Beware of the risk of your PCs assuming that this rule extends to NPCs and doing things like bitch slapping guards and what have you.