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5E Wound/Vitality System
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<blockquote data-quote="Xeviat" data-source="post: 7265811" data-attributes="member: 57494"><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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).</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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).</p><p></p><p>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).</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>Death Saves would kick in at 0 Wounds. Additional penalties could exist for those with Wound Damage.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p></p><p>Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Xeviat, post: 7265811, member: 57494"] 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. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk [/QUOTE]
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