Topic: Maiming Your Players' Characters
Do you? If so, how? Why?
I'm sure we've all cooked up or come across something like this before. My first experience with such a contrivance was back in the days of AD&D 2nd Ed., right after our DM purchased some nifty new screens with what amounted to a number of tables that charted out hit locations and critical effects. He ran out and purchased Combat & Tactics shortly after, and the game session after that my fighter was down a few IQ points (brain damage is a bitch). Definitely added something to the game, but it resulted in quite a few more dice being rolled.
Anyway, the wife and I were discussing some of the art in the Grindhouse boxed set (and in one of the upcoming supplements), and the Flame Princess' encounter with the slime came up, so we got to discussing possible reasons for tearing a player character a new one. I brought up the classic slime dropping from the roof, and mentioned that I'd have no problem taking a couple of points off a character's charisma score due to poor/sloppy dungeoneering on the behalf of the player. The wife sees it a little differently, but that's because she's a very kind-hearted lady. So, yeah, I think maiming a player character in any game is perfectly acceptable given the right reasons, doubly so if your group is engaged in a campaign with darker, more horrific aspects, but how do you gents go about handling this? What's your opinion on the matter?