Hit Points and Constitution damage System

Blue said:

This is an important difference for me. Back in 3.x I loved the concept of ability score damage, but the actual implementation was horrid. It adjusted so many "math bits" that were already worked out on your character sheet. And things like rolling HPs where you can't get less than 1 even with a CON penalty means you needed to record all rolls to be able to work out new HP max when suddenly at penalty CON.

So if it's actually CON, which has a bunch of ripple effects, or if it's in actuality a completely new score that is equal to your CON is a big deal.

Click to expand...

Originally I was thinking actual CON. I like the idea of the ripple effects, but I know the implementation would be a nightmare so my second thought was something new equal to CON. Personally, if you are injured (i.e. lower CON?) healing, resisting poisons, etc. would be more difficult IMO but like you said the ripple effects aren't worth it...

I think changing the wording would be useful. Instead of saying, “take con damage’, change it to a “Wound Pool equal to your Con score”. That would disassociate it from all the fiddly bits that occur when you con stat changes.

I like the rule in principle but I have to agree that a single crit at high level will blow through your wounds. Maybe make it CON + 1 point per level. So a 20th level character would have an extra 20 wound points.

I haven’t a lot of experience with high level play though.

All good suggestions.

A variant system was something like CON + Level and several other options occurred to me but it also involved a lot more points, which I later decided I wanted to avoid.

But, the point was that crits would have a good chance to smack a character down, especially when done by larger, stronger opponents. I like the idea that it makes such creatures really potentially dangerous. A Hill Giant, a freaking HILL GIANT!, should potentially take out a medium-size character on a CRIT!

Otherwise, with so many HP, it seems like even crits aren't very threatening once you get to mid and higher levels.

dnd4vr said:

Originally I was thinking actual CON. I like the idea of the ripple effects, but I know the implementation would be a nightmare so my second thought was something new equal to CON. Personally, if you are injured (i.e. lower CON?) healing, resisting poisons, etc. would be more difficult IMO but like you said the ripple effects aren't worth it...

Click to expand...

If you wanted, you could have "carefully controlled" ripple effects.

For example, have a new score but the modifier on that score is what is used for HD spend on short rests. So it's not affecting everything, but has some clearly defined specifics.

Charlaquin said:

If you haven’t read it, I recommend taking a look at the Angry GM’s Fighting Spirit hack. It accomplishes a lot of what you’re trying to do here. I haven’t tested it (again, the extra book keeping isn’t worth it for me personally), but it might suit your needs well, or at least give you some ideas. It’s where I got the disadvantage on attack rolls and +1 fictional exhaustion level idea from.

Click to expand...

So, I had some time this morning and read the article. It is kind of funny, because this almost exactly mirrors what D20 Star Wars did.

Hit points became "Vitality Points" and you got a new score, "Wound Points". I wanted to make sometime similar to this which was why I started the whole idea actually and have played around with it for a LONG time in DnD. Personally, I thought the introduction of Vitality and Wounds in D20 SW was one of the best aspects of the game and I am surprised it never surfaced in later editions of DnD.

It's pretty simple IIRC:

Wounds points = CON score
Critical hits go directly to wounds, but you don't double dice or anything. You roll normal damage and apply to wounds.
If you have any wound damage, you are fatigued and take a -2 on attacks, saves, and AC. You also have to make a Con check to remain conscious.
Once your Vitality (i.e. HP) are gone, damage overflows into wounds.
At 0 wounds, you are down and dying, blah blah blah.

The important point with the D20 SW system was not everything had Vitality. Vitality was special and only important NPCs, monsters, and the PCs had it, but everything had Wound Points. Mooks could be hit once and drop, just like you see Storm Troopers doing in the movies.

Certain actions cost you Vitality (like using Jedi powers), but Vitality recovered quickly. Wounds took much longer like 1 per day or something. Here is a shot of the basics:

dnd4vr said:

1. When your hit points are reduced to 0 or less, you are fatigued. While fatigued, you suffer disadvantage on all rolls.

2. You continue to take damage until your hit points reach Con x -1.

3. After that, pray for Raise Dead or roll a new character.

Click to expand...

Fixed it.

You can't have too many rules for zero-or-less hit points, because at zero HP, the player starts taking stress damage. They don't handle rules very well when that happens.

Can people bear with me while I brain storm something?

What if you divided hit points between two categories: vitality (regular hit points) and wounds 'the deadly damage'

Your vitality pool is your basic hit dice (your hit point roll based on the die)
Your wounds are your con bonus to hit points +1/level.

So if your Con is 12 and you are a cleric, you get 7 hit points (vitality) and 2 (wounds represented by your Con bonus +1 hit point from your hit dice pool)

When you get hit by a weapon, you have a threshold that removes hit points from vitality and then overflows to his wounds.
The threshold is equal to your Con score + 1/2 level + AC bonus.

So, our cleric has a threshold of 17 (CON+Level 1+4 Scale Mail)

At first level, not much changes because all damage goes straight to his vitality then overflows to wounds.
a crit does regular damage but goes straight to wounds and drops a character but at 1st level, a PC is going to drop with a crit anyways.


At higher levels (let's say 10th):

The cleric now has 47 vitality and 20 (con bonus + level) wounds

His damage threshold is (23: halfplate 6+level 5+CON 12)

The first 23 hit points go to regular hit points, any overflow goes to wounds. Crits go straight to wounds.

when you reach 0 vitality, you are staggered: penalties etc...
When you reach 0 wounds, you are making death saves.

By making your CON a type of damage reduction, it becomes important with every hit, instead of just on crits. Overall, it's still the same amount of hit points but they are just split between the pools.

Also makes armour more relevant to damage. (edit: mage armour and shield would boost threshold too) is there a way to refine it?

Here’s what I’ve been doing, and it’s been working beautifully at my table.

•When you are not wearing armor, you are vulnerable to damage.
•Critical hits scored against the target do normal damage but break it’s armor (in the case of targets with thick hide, like a dragon, critical hits do double damage instead).
•Attack rolls that result in a natural 1 break the attacker’s weapon.
•An attacker can attempt a “called-shot” against a target to bypass the armor by taking disadvantage on the attack roll. If the attack succeeds, the target takes damage as if they were unarmored. (Optional: you can attach effects to this like disarm, trip, shove, severing a limb - which succeed when the damage dealt by the attack exceeds the target’s constitution score).
•Whenever a creature takes damage in an amount equal to or greater than their Constitution score, they must make a Death Saving Throw (DC 10). (For unnamed NPCs, they die on a failed saving throw. Named NPCs die on their third failed death saving throw).

Summary: We don’t really change how hit points or recovery function. We just occasionally add death saving throws.

TaranTheWanderer said:

Can people bear with me while I brain storm something?

What if you divided hit points between two categories: vitality (regular hit points) and wounds 'the deadly damage'

Your vitality pool is your basic hit dice (your hit point roll based on the die)
Your wounds are your con bonus to hit points +1/level.

So if your Con is 12 and you are a cleric, you get 7 hit points (vitality) and 2 (wounds represented by your Con bonus +1 hit point from your hit dice pool)

When you get hit by a weapon, you have a threshold that removes hit points from vitality and then overflows to his wounds.
The threshold is equal to your Con score + 1/2 level + AC bonus.

So, our cleric has a threshold of 17 (CON+Level 1+4 Scale Mail)

At first level, not much changes because all damage goes straight to his vitality then overflows to wounds.
a crit does regular damage but goes straight to wounds and drops a character but at 1st level, a PC is going to drop with a crit anyways.

At higher levels (let's say 10th):

The cleric now has 47 vitality and 20 (con bonus + level) wounds

His damage threshold is (23: halfplate 6+level 5+CON 12)

The first 23 hit points go to regular hit points, any overflow goes to wounds. Crits go straight to wounds.

when you reach 0 vitality, you are staggered: penalties etc...
When you reach 0 wounds, you are making death saves.

By making your CON a type of damage reduction, it becomes important with every hit, instead of just on crits. Overall, it's still the same amount of hit points but they are just split between the pools.

Also makes armour more relevant to damage. (edit: mage armour and shield would boost threshold too) is there a way to refine it?

Click to expand...

I think I followed most of that. The issue I am having is I don't want an added level of complexity like the damage threshold (I played around with an idea like this myself today actually).

I wouldn't add CON mod to wounds for every level. A high CON at 20th level could be over 100 wounds!
I like wounds = CON + 1 per level. Simple, gives 10 or so up to maybe 40ish at higher levels.

A similar split I had also was you rolled HP and once you had HP over your CON, that became your Vitality. Say you have 34 hp normally and a CON 14, then you would have 14 Wounds and 20 Vitality (so they sum to the original 34 hp).

I don't know, there are SO many ways you can do it... sigh.

Here is what I came up with today and there are two ways to do it, but number-wise they basically work out the same with minor points:

IDEA #1

1. At level one you add your CON score to your HP. Say a Fighter with CON 14 would have 26 HP (10 + 2 + 14).
2. When your HP drops to your CON score or lower, you are staggered, fatigued, or whatever you want to call it. You must make a CON save to remain conscious and whenever you take more damage.
3. When your HP hits 0, you are unconscious and dying, making death saves.

IDEA #2

1. You have HP as normal, but you can go negative equal to your CON. So, a Fighter with CON 14 can go to -14 HP.
2. When your HP hits 0 or lower, you are staggered, fatigued, or whatever you want to call it. You must make a CON save to remain conscious and whenever you take more damage.
3. When your HP reaches your CON in negative numbers, you are unconscious and dying, making death saves.

The issue I have with #1 is something like Sleep gets nerfed. Adding average CON 10 means the 5d8 is less likely to work on PCs. But, on the positive side, you never deal with negative numbers, which is the issue I have with #2 (not personally, but I know some players might have math issues...).

Bawylie adds something I decided on today as well. If you take a critical hit or suffer damage greater than their CON, you roll for a Death Save. This way, you might have a decent number of HP left, but if suddenly you also have two failed death saves, going to 0 hp and facing a third death save failure is very scary! If you accumulate 3 failed death saves and then go to 0 HP, you die! YIKES! :O

Anyway, I'll post more in the morning after further thought. Thanks for adding to the idea!

Here is what I am going to pitch:

First off, more HP: You add your Constitution score to your hit points at 1st-level.

Damage Threshold (DT): Your DT equals your Constitution score plus your character level. If your hit points are less than your DT after you are hit, you become wounded. You must make a CON save (as per Spell Concentration) to remain conscious.

Wounded: While wounded you suffer one or more of the following effects determined by random roll. Each time you are hit while wounded, you must roll again, ignoring duplicate effects.

1. Disadvantage on your ability and skill checks
2. Disadvantage on your attack rolls
3. Disadvantage on your saving throws
4. Your damage is reduced by half
5. Your speed is reduced by half
6. You cannot take both an action and bonus action on your turn
7. You are temporarily blind
8. You are temporarily deaf
9. One of your hands will not work (roll randomly or DM's choice)
10. Attacks against you have advantage

(note: I might add more or replace some of these if I think of any.)

The effects of being wounded are removed after a Long Rest (maybe a Short Rest?). A Lesser Restoration will remove one effect, while a Greater Restoration will remove all effects of being wounded.

Of course, I would love feedback on the system, concept, and wounded effects! I am considering making a critical hit automatically make you wounded, but without the CON save to remain conscious if your HP are above your DT.

FYI, I have run some numbers and typically by 2nd- or 3rd-level your HP will be high enough you would have to lose about half or more before you became wounded. Also, since you add your CON score to your HP to begin with, character survival at lower levels is greatly increased. Remember, RAW right now you would more or less be unconscious automatically when you fall below the equivalent of your DT (roughly at 0 HP).