Remodeling Hit Points, and Reconciling Healing

It's been a while.

So...

Hit Points! They suck, right? I'm trying to be relevant, here.

I mean, really. This is truly commentary ahead of its time.

This is an attempt to reconcile two types of gameplay in D&D: Fast Healing, and Slow Healing. In the standard D&D 5e ruleset, characters heal all of their hit points after a long rest, including damage that reduces the character’s hit point total. With the standard Slow Healing method presented in the Dungeon Master’s Guide, characters can only recover hit points using Hit Dice (rolling them to heal). The hit dice can recover damage that reduces the hit point total during a long rest (you can also spend them during a short rest, but it doesn’t restore this kind of damage).

Honestly, I’m not a huge fan of either of these methods. The “fast healing” is supposed to represent fatigue recovery. Pulled muscles and worn endurance. But It unfortunately doesn’t really represent actual wounds very well. Either you state that they take wounds, in which case they seem to heal overnight. Or you state that they don’t, in which case the only wound they take is the final blow that drops them to 0. And while that’s a fine way to do things, it doesn’t really represent normal cuts, bruises, and punctures that characters suffer along the way. A gash across the leg might not be life-threatening (unless it festers), but it definitely affects how you move and fight.

The “slow healing” method CAN suffer the same issue. I use it in my home games, and characters are constantly able to heal all their hit points overnight. However, it’s intended to force HP to represent wounds more than vitality. It takes longer, and therefore represents wounds closing, burns healing, etc. Unfortunately, tracking hit dice for every rest can be annoying, especially when the players are in the middle of a dungeon and they’re missing HD from the last Long Rest where they had to spend like all of them because of a nasty fight with some invisible stalkers and they’re standing outside the dragon’s FREAKING LAIR but they don’t have any hit dice to spend and they’re in a time crunch because the dragon is going to eat the prince if they don’t act NOW and their last THREE characters died from this exact same problem and UGH CAN’T I JUST HEAL YOU BASTARD DM!?

I know there’s an OSR/grodnardy argument about “back in our day, we only healed ONE HIT POINT a night!” I don’t care. I understand that some games need you to really focus on the grim’n’grit of old-school AD&D, but most games don’t tend to follow that model these days. They seek to extend the adventuring day and allow characters to recover from fatigue in a somewhat-timely manner so they can keep fighting without going back to town or camp, where they might run the chance of wandering monsters, inclement weather, or any number of other evil doo-dads that the DM keeps stored in his Scary Folder of Doom™.

I think I’ve rambled enough, though, and you’ve probably skipped over all of this anyway. So, without further ado, HIT POINTS and Wounds!

NOT! I do want to pay special mention to the newest Unearthed Arcana, which offers a “vitality” system. Essentially, you have a separate amount of “vitality” points that deplete if you take 10 damage or more, slowly lowering your maximum hit point total, and if they hit 0, you start taking directly from Vitality. I actually like these, but they are WAY more complicated than I want to deal with. Therefore…

Hit Points and Wounds

Hit Points

In this system, hit points represent your endurance and fatigue. Getting hit normally causes you to suffer hit point damage, as you take a heavy hit to your armor or shield, are forced to dodge from an attack, or suffer minor damage from a spell (sunburn from a successful save against a fireball). Effectively, normal hit point damage is re-skinned as vigor damage, and specifically represents lowered endurance, pulled muscles, and other such minor things that don’t deal damage, but wear you down.

An example of a potion of healing in this system.

You recover all of your hit points after a long rest, and may recover them normally by spending Hit Dice during a short rest. Hit points are healed normally by magical or alchemical healing.

Wounds

You can also accrue Wounds. Every time you take an amount of damage equal to or greater than your current level (minimum 3), you suffer a wound. You cannot suffer more than one wound from a single attack or spell, except as mentioned below. Wounds are actual wounds. They represent you getting cut, stabbed, bashed, and bruised. They are not lethal, but definitely affect your capabilities in combat. For every wound you have accrued, your hit point maximum is reduced by an amount equal to your level. If this ever causes your hit point maximum to be reduced to 0, you immediately fall unconscious and must begin rolling Death Saves as normal. Your Hit Point Maximum is increased to 1 if you roll a 20 on a death save.

I couldn't find a picture of the guys with arrows in their butts from Krod Mandoon.
So instead, here's a similar picture featuring a fat kid and a police officer.

You remove 1 wound after a long rest. You may remove additional wounds during a long rest by spending Hit Dice at the end of that rest (1 Hit Die spent removes 1 Wound). You cannot remove wounds by spending Hit Dice at the end of a short rest. Whenever you receive magical healing, you remove 1 wound for every die that is rolled to recover your hit points (for example, a level 3 Cure Wounds spell recovers 3d8 hit points and 3 wounds). This may extend to alchemical healing at the DM’s discretion (I wouldn’t, but that’s the sadist in me).

Whenever you are hit with a critical hit, you automatically suffer 1 wound, in addition to any wounds you might suffer due to damage. Creatures that normally reduce your hit point total with their attacks (a wight’s Life Drain, for example) instead inflict an automatic wound with the attack, in addition to any wounds they might inflict due to damage.

Behind the Design

Like I said, I like the Unearthed Arcana design. I just think it’s a little too number-happy. My version requires a player to remember exactly 2 numbers in combat: their level, and the number of wounds they have accrued. Their hit point total is an easy thing to calculate, and honestly won’t need to actually BE calculated until they receive some kind of healing. It might get tricky once characters reach higher levels, and are calculating 8 wounds at level 14, subtracted from a normal HP total. But SOMEBODY at the table is bound to either be decent at math or has a cell phone that can do basic math. Accruing a wound REQUIRES you to take minimum damage equal to the amount the wound takes away, so you’re never losing MORE hit points than you normally would, unless you are hit with a critical or a life drain effect, which is a special case.

Plus, I’ve always been a fan of 1-for-1 systems, where one thing equals another 1 thing. In this case, one chunk of damage passing your “threshold” = one wound = one level’s worth less HP.

The reason for requiring you to take your LEVEL in damage, rather than 10 points, is twofold. First, as mentioned above, it’s to keep tracking easy in combat, since you’ll never have to take extra damage by accruing normal wounds. Second, I liked scaling it up over time. The idea being that your threshold for being wounded would naturally increase over time as you get better at absorbing and dodging attacks. At level 1, just about anything but a house cat inflicts a wound, because at level 1 you suck. You’re dumb and don’t know how to do anything, so of course the goblins are going to hit your leg with their swords. Of course the arrows are going to sink into your flesh. The world sucks at level 1. At level 17, though, even an Ancient Red Dragon’s multiattack routine isn’t going to deal more than 1 wound to you, because you know how to dodge that shit. However, you should also note that, at level 17, wounds are MUCH more scary than they are at level 1. Lowering your HP by 1 point, when you have 6-17 total, and will roll nearly double that when you increase in level, isn’t nearly as big a deal as lowering your HP by 17, when that’s more than you can actually roll each level, barring barbarians, which barely squeak in there. I’m sure someone out there will argue the mathematics of this point, and prove that it’s actually deadlier at low levels. But my point is that it feels much scarier to have 17 fewer maximum hit points, even at high levels. It feels like a serious blow to your character.

I understand that this is a huge block of text.
Therefore, I apologize with this picture of Red Sonja and Conan.

With the Unearthed Arcana system, the opposite becomes true. At low levels, it’s basically impossible to take enough damage to lower your vitality unless you suffer a critical hit, in which case you take double vitality damage. At high levels, the same ancient red dragon would deal 4 points of vitality damage (or 2-3 wounds, numerically).

This is also why I limited it to 1 wound per attack. At low levels, you obviously see the exploitation. A critical hit could completely wreck a character, leaving them a slobbering mess on the floor, if they took double or even triple their threshold in damage and took 1 wound per X damage. Plus, I like the idea of “one hit, one wound”. Why would a single sword strike cause three separate wounds. Maybe that’s me being literal. But I like the idea that you can physically count how many wounds you have. Some players might even have fun role-playing that aspect. A level 1 character enters a town-healer’s place of business, and the DM asks how many wounds they have. They reply 7, and the healer’s jaw drops. They’re basically bleeding from everywhere, and the healer immediately rushes them inside to receive medical attention.

In terms of this system’s ability to find a balance between fast and slow healing, I actually like it. You recover the bulk of your HP (unless you got REALLY messed up by the dungeon) automatically, but have to either wait or receive magical healing to overcome the really nasty stuff.

Originally, I considered attaching things like levels of exhaustion to wounds, but honestly, I’m not a huge fan of the “death spiral” concept (wherein as you take more damage, you progressively become shittier at everything), and think that the lowered HP maximum is sufficient.

…and, I think that’s all. Good stuff, if I do say so myself. Feel free to steal the idea for your own games, playtest it yourself, and report back if it’s totes broke.

‘til then,

Kick Ass,

Take Names,

And Always Loot the Bodies.