D&D 5E Goofy inversion of HP tropes

[RangerWickett]

Normally we interpret HP as a sort of 'ability to avoid serious injury' points. If you have 30 HP and a troll deals 10 with a bite, well, you got gnawed on for a half second but pulled free. After all, you've still got 20 HP, which is enough to survive a few sword strikes, so you're clearly not hurt too badly.

I propose an inversion.

You still have HP, but damage you take doesn't reduce it. Rather, your HP is the maximum amount of magical healing you can receive in a day. Call it Healing Points.

Any hit that does damage actually wounds you. Any hit that does at least 5 damage is a 'light wound' and typically involves getting fingers or toes chopped off, or slicing open your eye. Any hit that does at least 10 damage is a 'moderate' wound, which might be the loss of a hand or foot, or a slight case of being disemboweled. Take 15 damage or more, and that's a 'serious' wound, which is the loss of a full limb, or having your intestines torn out, or your spine broken. Anything that does over 20 damage is a 'critical wound,' like having your heart exploded by a lightning bolt, your lungs withered by necrotic magic, your skull caved open, your entire outer layer of skin being dissolved in acid, or everything below your waist frozen solid and then shattered.

There'd be charts to determine what happens with light, moderate, serious, and critical wounds. People love random rolls.

As horrific as those injuries are, any time you receive magical healing you A) deduct the amount healed from your HP for the day, and B) recover from a wound of the appropriate damage threshold.

Now, the injuries have consequences. If you lose a finger, you have disadvantage on actions using that hand. If you lose an arm, a lot of stuff becomes impossible, and you start making death saving throws from blood loss. A critical wound prevents almost any useful action, and probably kills you within a few rounds. But hey, receive a 4d8 cure spell, and your shattered limbs regrow in an instant and you're good to keep fighting. Heck, maybe you don't have a spellcaster who can heal! Just make a Heal check to stanch the bleeding, and when you spend healing surges during a rest, you sew your old limb on. It'll have a scar, but that just gives you more style.

Sure, this is a terrible idea for a normal game, but if you intend to trap your PCs in a psychic nightmare for Halloween and torment them with gruesome wounds that turn their beloved bodies into giblets, I hope you'll consider my proposal.

 

[jaelis]

It would seem that would make high level characters incredibly fragile. Every time they got hit they would be disabled.

But for a one-off game at a set level, it could probably work.

Do monsters suffer the same effects?

 

[Coroc]

Critical injury tables are not enhancing the game in any way. It is a lot of work to include them and observe any extra modifiers created by them.

And i would never play in such a System if the rules only apply to the PC but not to the Monsters, ahm forget this i would not Play with such a System at all. Tbh i tried this many decades ago and it just is no fun.

My character received a severed Hand in an unjustified tavern brawl and was making checks for blood loss and whatever every round instead of participating in the adventure. the system was Dragonquest or so but it has many similarities with D&D.

This does not even work well and believable within other Systems. A guy i knew played a dwarf in an "the black eye" campaign and his character lost a leg. Due to high bonuses on the relevant checks he was still almost operating as normal despite a traumatic injury which would requiere intensive care IRL. Very realistic is it?

If you want Gore, then do it with narrative only! Check out Shemeskas planescape Story hour to see how to do suich things. That is harder than some stephen king stuff (read his books that might help you too) Just describe what grisly things befall your PC or mobs. Be realistic in that a grisly wound is one that gets the character in the negatives)

 

[Fanaelialae]

It's interesting, but if you set hp as the threshold for magical healing, PCs are going to be able to take less damage than in the RAW game. (Normally, you get your hit dice - which will be somewhere in the ballpark of full hp - PLUS any magical healing.)

If you were to disallow hit dice for healing, that would put a lot more pressure on players to play healing classes and use the majority of their slots to heal the party.

I think some additional modifications might be necessary to make this work smoothly.

 

[neobolts]

Sure, this is a terrible idea for a normal game

This is my favorite sentence in a rules variant pitch. You said it right as I was thinking it lol.

But for a one-shot there are some cool concepts here.

 

[Schmoe]

Maybe it's just me, but I think a "slight" disembowelment is still more than just a moderate wound . This sounds like it would be fun in an over-the-top sort of way for a one-shot.