A suggestion to 'fix' hit points.

[AverageCitizen]

Not Combat Effective = Dead. lol.

Anyway... how bout... Danger Points? DP is a good acronym, and it has a nice Indiana Jones ring to it.

 

[loseth]

I like 'fight.'

'Blackleaf hasn't got much fight left in him.'

'The hobgoblin takes 12 points of fight out Blackleaf.'

'Oh no! Blackleaf's got no fight left!'

 

[Dragonblade]

I always thought the term "Vitality" was a good one even though I didn't like the actual mechanics of the Wound/Vitality system.

So change Hitpoints to Vitality. Change Healing Surge to Recovery. And now the terminology matches the mechanics.

For people who want to add a touch of simulation and allow for long term injury, I say steal the SW Saga condition track with some slight modification.

Any time a character goes negative HP in 4e, that signifies serious injury beyond simple fatigue and scratches (since you literally go unconscious this makes sense).

You move one step down the condition track. This condition remains even though your Hitpoints (aka Vitality), and your Healing Surges (aka Recoveries) reset after an Extended Rest per the standard rules.

For every day of complete bed rest you have, you make a 4e style save. No change on a 1-9, on a 10 or better you move 1 step back up the condition track. DMs can decide how they want magic to affect this, and you could add variants, like a roll of natural 20 shifts you all the way up, or perhaps just up two steps, and a roll of 1 actually drops you a step.

 

[MaelStorm]

Very good post. I like your suggestion so much I'm going to steal your idea. It's not too severe, plus it does add realism.

 

[D'karr]

I like 'fight.'

'Blackleaf hasn't got much fight left in him.'

'The hobgoblin takes 12 points of fight out Blackleaf.'

'Oh no! Blackleaf's got no fight left!'

Blackleaf needs food badly.

 

[DreamChaser]

For people who want to add a touch of simulation and allow for long term injury, I say steal the SW Saga condition track with some slight modification.

Any time a character goes negative HP in 4e, that signifies serious injury beyond simple fatigue and scratches (since you literally go unconscious this makes sense).

Perhaps add a massive damage threshold to this. Take a single hit equal to your bloodied (or surge if you want more danger) number, you move down on the condition track.

I think healing injuries would be a ritual requiring some equivalent resource expenditure. If it would normally take 1-2 days per level on the condition track, perhaps a cost of 50 gp for the ritual per point of condition healed.

This same mechanic could be used (sparingly) as a plot point for vile or vicious injuries that linger on the condition track and need special ingredients to restore.

DC

 

[loseth]

I think healing injuries would be a ritual requiring some equivalent resource expenditure. If it would normally take 1-2 days per level on the condition track, perhaps a cost of 50 gp for the ritual per point of condition healed.

That is a really sweet suggestion. 1-2 days is just long enough to up the fear of injury (for those of us who like that sort of tension) without being enough to derail an adventure (as realistic healing times would be). And if it's a ritual, it makes good in-game sense (nasty wounds require heavy-duty magic to heal them).

 

[Timmer]

Hello all. I just thought I'd add in another take on the HP/health system.

The MMO, Lord of the Rings Online, tweaks the interpretation a bit at least for semantics (they didn't want people dying and getting resurrected as, well, not very Lord of the Ringy). So they refer to hp as "Morale". As you get beat on in combat you lose morale, your will to fight. Eventually you'll lose all morale and "flee from the fight".

One interesting outcome of this is they added a new mechanic called Dread. When you fight evil beings in the game (mainly the big bad guys) they have auras of Dread. Dread basically puts a flat reduction of your Morale in place. Ie, if you're near a Balrog, everyone gets 100 Dread (or -100 Morale). Nothing you do can make this up. So if you only have 300 Morale to begin with you're at a severe handicap. I think the system does more than this but since I haven't really played it I can't give personal examples.

It's not a perfect system and works better in an MMO world where you're character is going to "die" often but come back, but I give them creativity points for coming up with a new twist and then doing something with it to take advantage of their semantics.

Just food for thought

 

[Kzach]

I like the idea of some sort of wound effect that isn't just waved away.

To keep it simple, you could say that Bloodied equates to being actually hit but not significantly enough to kill you. Give it a small penalty to all attacks and defenses (something that scales) until magically cured (healing surges, regardless of the trigger, don't count).

If the character ever reaches 0 or less, up that modifier to something really nasty, like halving the character's attacks and defenses until magically cured.

That way you maintain all the benefits of the systems that are in place whilst adding in something that makes combats that slight bit more realistic and nasty.

I was thinking that perhaps you could equate the Bloodied penalty to be half the character's level. So a fifteenth level character would have a -7 penalty and if you've gone past 0, a -15 penalty. Although, that sounds a bit too much...