D&D 5E 5E Wound/Vitality System

[Xeviat]

Hi everyone. Some recent threads have me wanting to hash out a good way of utilizing the old Wound/Vitality System in 5E. This is to create a more gritty, dangerous world, and to make some sense of HP. It could also be used to have a slow recovery system. But there are a few things to address.

First, what is Wound/Vitality? Hit Points are separated into Wound Points and Vitality Points. Wound points represent your actual meat. Damage to Wound Points are real physical damage. Vitality Points are your endurance, your ability to turn solid hits into glancing blows, or your energy used to dodge entirely.

When a character takes a hit, the damage goes to their Vitality Points so long as they have them. Any additional damage spills over to Wound Points. Critical Hits and attacks while you are surprised bypass Vitality and go straight to wounds (I could go either way with Surprise, but I think it would reward sneaky gritty play).

A character’s Vitality Points are equal to their Hit Points in the base system. A character’s Wound Points are equal to their Constitution score (maybe Con score + Level to help out). When you have Wound Damage, your maximum VP are reduced by 0.5/level per point of WP damage, similar to how Con damage worked in 3E.

Critical Hits don’t deal extra damage by default, the damage just bypasses HP. Crit Range extensions end up being worth a lot, but the Champion needs a bennie. I’m not sure if additional dice like sneak attack and smite should go to Wounds or only go to Vitality (likely only to Vitality, unless we want 3rd level rogues to drop typical creatures with a surprise attack).

Hit Dice and long rests restore VP fully (up to your maximum based on WP Damage). WP are restored at X per day, likely based on Con Mod (let’s say to start, 2+Con Mod, so an 8 Con only restores 1 per day and takes a week to bounce back from being dropped to 0 WP; a 20 Con would be regain 7 per day and be back on their feet after 3 days).

With this, against a creature with 10 WP (rather common), a crit from a typical Great Weapon user (2d6+3) will likely drop them. That feels right. A great axe to the neck will probably kill you.

Death Saves would kick in at 0 Wounds. Additional penalties could exist for those with Wound Damage.

Healing spells should only restore Vitality Points until higher levels, I think. But I’m not sure how to do this. 3E had the level bonus on healing spells go to Wounds. Wounds could be healed with Medicine checks and healer’s kits maybe, through the Healer Feat and as Care during long rests.

What are your thoughts? It will make the game more deadly, but combined with a few other things to shorten the adventuring day (pushing to short rest recovery for most things, for instance), the game could be made more gritty.


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[Robert Charles]

Main problem would be diminishing ratio of would to vitality as you level. Crits from higher level monsters would start to drop PCs in one hit (ex: your con score plus level is about 30 at level 15). It certainly makes things more gritty but I'd say more random than gritty.

Perhaps a solution would allow system shock check or a athletics or acrobatics check when damage would go straight to wound damage. This would allow anybody with a decent str, dex or con score to have a chance to not get dropped straight away.

It's sort of like comfirming a crit but puts it on the defender and generalized to anything that would go bypass vitality.

 

[Igfig]

The big issue that plagues a lot of vitality/wound systems is that having crits go straight to WP means the game goes from a gradual expenditure of resources to a 1-in-20 russian roulette. It certainly makes the game seem grittier, but it also negates a fair chunk of what makes D&D combat interesting in the first place. There're fewer interesting choices and tradeoffs to make, because you can't predict and plan around lethal blows.

A good way to deal with that is to make sure that only a far stronger enemy has any chance at all of taking out most players in a single hit. The simplest way to do that is to increase players' WP a bit more; Con score + Level doesn't sound unreasonable, but it's possible that Level x 2 or Level x <1/4 of HD size> is a better bet. You may want to run a couple of test combats on your own to see how it works in practice.

(Alternatively, don't have crits go to WP at all.)

And yeah, definitely have wound penalties for WP damage. A roll on the Lingering Injuries table in the DMG might be a good place to start.

 

[Dausuul]

Critical Hits don’t deal extra damage by default, the damage just bypasses HP.

I agree with the last two posts. This is a common, and utterly self-defeating, feature of WP/VP systems. The whole purpose of VP is to provide a buffer against instant death. If crits can bypass VP, then the buffer will fail on a regular basis, probably once or twice per encounter. I would strongly suggest keeping crits as they are (bonus damage).

 

[nswanson27]

If you want a grittier system, why not have it so healing spells only stabilize a character making death saving throws? Once they are stable, then they come up. Makes going down a bigger deal, without going overboard.

 

[Tony Vargas]

When a character takes a hit, the damage goes to their Vitality Points so long as they have them. Any additional damage spills over to Wound Points. Critical Hits and attacks while you are surprised bypass Vitality and go straight to wounds (I could go either way with Surprise, but I think it would reward sneaky gritty play).

In systems like this, if there's /any/ way to bypass 'vitality,' it becomes all about bypassing vitality.

I'd stick with the D&D way of modeling crits & sneak attacks - with extra damage that still has to burn through vitality. Vitality should also keep you from going unconscious, being held/slept/etc or otherwise rendered helpless.

Hit Dice and long rests restore VP fully.

Sounds fine.

Death Saves would kick in at 0 Wounds. Additional penalties could exist for those with Wound Damage.

Maybe. Maybe you wouldn't need 'em so much in a system like this?

Healing spells should only restore Vitality Points until higher levels, I think. But I’m not sure how to do this.

Yes. Hp-'healing' of any sort should go to Vitality.

Healing of actual wounds can be restricted to the Heal spell, or something like Restoration. Even making wounds 'points' on the same scale as hps could be a mistake, BTW. It might be better just have a wound inflicted have an effect on the victim - reduced speed, disadvantage, penalties, save to take an action, whatever - until he recovers from it.

 

[cooperjer]

One thing to consider with any change to the HP system is how it will affect NPCs and the things you need to track as a DM. Does something as simple as a modifier at 1/2 HP make the game gritty enough for you? Maybe a -5 modifier to ability checks, saves, and attack roll at 1/2 HP. If you feel up to tracking a 1/4 HP level then add something like 1/2 movement speed at 1/4 HP or less.

In addition, as others have suggested, consider changing the availability of healing. Is healing only available as a ritual? Is healing magic only available at a holy site? Does a short rest allow only 1 HD of HP recovery and a long rest allow only 3 HD of HP recovery? Are HD recovered only after 1 week of rest or only if the character is in a protected environment?

 

[Stalker0]

Agree with a lot of notes here. Nothing should bypass vitality...nothing. It breaks the system...as has been seen in several other systems.

 

[Lanefan]

We've had a system sort-of like this for ages - body points and fatigue points. The highlights:

only fatigue points scale with level; the body points you start with (between 2 and 5, usually; in addition to 1st-level fatigues) are what you have forever, barring very rare circumstances such as limb loss
body points plus fatigue points equals hit points
body points are harder to cure or rest back, fatigue points work as normal
you start taking body point damage when you've run out of fatigues
death is at -10 and points 0 and less are always considered as body points (in 5e this would replace the death-save system)
temporary hit points from any source are always considered as fatigue points even if such are received when you're at less than full body points
melee attacks and point-blank missile fire against a bound-sleeping-paralyzed-etc. opponent go straight to body points (usually); normal surprise attacks and criticals (usually) go to fatigues
if you've gone below 0 you can only be cured up to full body points and cannot recover fatigues at all until some time has passed
if you are below 0 and not cured you will slowly bleed to death
there is still a small physical component to fatigue point damage - little nicks, scratches, bruises, etc. - to allow poisoned weapons to work as intended

Overall this does add a bit of complication but it's more than worth it for the small dose of realism it provides.

Lanefan

 

[TheCosmicKid]

I agree with the last two posts. This is a common, and utterly self-defeating, feature of WP/VP systems. The whole purpose of VP is to provide a buffer against instant death. If crits can bypass VP, then the buffer will fail on a regular basis, probably once or twice per encounter. I would strongly suggest keeping crits as they are (bonus damage).

Agreed.

Or maybe roll over a couple of points, possibly go half-and-half, if you want to maintain the tension of "crits wound you!" without randomly killing PCs.