| i had this idea for the Wound system:
you get a Wound when you fail a death save (i would limit this to once per encounter based on the fact that nobody in my group can roll above a 5 on a death save).
you get a wound when you suffer a critical hit.
every wound you suffer gives you following penalties:
you suffer -1 penalty to all Str, Con and Dex based skills. this way you still have the feel of being beat up without pushing the character closer towards death in combat.
you could also reduce the amount of hit points granted by your healing surges by the amount of wounds you have. this might make math little longer as far as healing goes, but its not as deadly as reducing healing by half.
recovering from wounds:
at the end of an extended rest you can make an endurance check (you can make a heal check DC 15 to give yourself +2 bonus), or somebody other than you can make a Heal check on you. on a success you heal one of your wounds.
the DC is equal to 10+ half your level (DC based on the level of whoever gave you the wound would make more sense, but you dont want to keep track of where you got the wound)
you could also allow recovery of multiple wounds at once by increasing the DC by... lets say 2 for each wound.
anywho, just something to think about. | 
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