Alternate Rules for Hit Points and Lingering Damage

[Esteban]

So my players have a major wilderness encounter. Two manticores attack their camp and after some serious melee and ranged combat, the manticores are dead. All of the characters took major hit point damage. The proceed to sleep for the rest of the night and wake refreshed and fully healed after a long rest.

I hate this. I want there to be some lingering effects from a combat that took place only 8 hours before. Does anyone have alternative rules for this? I'm not trying to add a layer of rules to the whole process and I don't want to introduce an entirely new way to handle hit points in 5E - I think the short and long term rest mechanic is too 'baked' into 5E to eliminate. I just want some way to introduce a certain level of grittiness to the game.

One idea I was think about was adding "Wound Tokens" to the game. Once a character takes half his hit points in damage he would receive 1d3 Wound Tokens. Tokens would be 'spent' by the DM to give the character Disadvantage on 1D20 roll. Once used, a token would be eliminated. Any sort of magical healing would eliminate wound tokens.

Does anyone else have ideas for representing lingering damage in 5E?

 

[cooperjer]

Generally the Exhaustion mechanic works pretty well for an additional layer of tracking excess damage. One benefit of this is that it puts the ownership of tracking extra effects on the PC rather than the DM.

Another way to look at the added damage would be to review the DMG for wounds. I've read of other DMs applying a level of exhaustion if a character takes a multiple of it's Con score in damage. The multiple might be one or it might be two. Before you implement any of the above get verification from your players that they are willing to play with those rules.

Another way to look at the manitcore fight is to consider it as a heavy or exhausting workout that night. A good six hours of rest later the characters wake up a little sore, but nothing that would affect their actual performance. In this way, you interpret HP as a representation of how tired or exhausted a character is rather than a cut, bruise, or other physical deformation on the body.

 

[Satyrn]

Any sort of magical healing would eliminate wound tokens.

I like that wound token idea - except for the extra work placed on the DM - and I think that magic healing bit will ruin what you're trying to achieve. Magical healing is readily available, your players will just slap a bit of healing on everyone before a long rest, and the the next morning they'll all be fresh and ready to go, just as it was without this rule.

Magical healing doesn't have to relieve these conditions.

 

[RangerWickett]

My GM ran a 'white walker apocalypse' mini-campaign with the following house rules.

• When dropped to 0, you don't fall unconscious. However, you take one level of exhaustion from that damage.
• Any time you take damage while at 0, you add an extra level of exhaustion.
• While at 0 HP, you make a death save at the start of your turn. If you fail, you gain an extra level of exhaustion.
• You die when at 6 levels of exhaustion.
• While at 0 HP, you are treated as having two *temporary* levels of exhaustion, but a) these 'temporary' levels of exhaustion can't kill you, just knock you out, and b) if you're healed the temporary exhaustion goes away.
• Each day, if you get 8 hours of rest, you recover a level of exhaustion. 'Cure wounds' spells or other healing don't help, but restoration would (not that you'll ever get high enough level to cast that).

The effect of all of this was that in the first session we were fleeing toward a safe haven, pursued by shambling undead. We entered a narrow canyon, and ended up surrounded as more zombies appeared in front of us. My dwarf fighter moved up and attacked one, but didn't kill it. The 5 zombies proceeded to

a) grab me
b) drag me down to the ground (and since I was grabbed, I couldn't stand up)
c) eat my flesh (I had good armor, so it was only a few points of damage each round)

I kept taking a Dodge action to keep them from eating me while my allies were busy fighting the zombies coming up from behind. Slowly I was reduced to 0 hp, then accumulated more and more exhaustion. The party's cleric healed me, but I still had exhaustion (representing all the chunks of flesh torn out of my neck and face and hands). Finally they took the zombies down and dragged me, with 4 levels of exhaustion, on to safety.

Thereafter, we had to rest for several days before we could move on quickly to the next safe haven, which increased the tension that more undead would surround us. It worked pretty great.



Also, most enemies just gave up at 0 HP, and things like undead would just collapse - except zombies, which have their own mechanic involving Con saves - but prominent foes would keep on fighting to the death. I think if I ran it I'd probably add something about "if you take a critical hit while at 0 hp, you might lose a limb."

 

[I'm A Banana]

Easiest way is just to change how long short/long rests are.

If a short rest is all 8 hours, and a long rest is, say, 10 days (to have it line up with downtime measurements), a days-long journey becomes something you can feel attrition over.

You could also leverage the concept of "safe rests." So, like, you can only take a long rest in a "safe zone" like a town or an inn - resting on the road could count as a short rest, but will never count as a long rest (well, maybe for the ranger).

Those are probably the most mechanics-lite ways to account for it.

 

[dagger]

Have you looked at the Injuries table in the DMG? Only thing I dont like is how easy the stuff is fixed

 

[Guest 6801718]

I was going to suggest the alternate Injuries rule in the DMG as well. Like dagger says, some of the stuff could be easily fixed, though not all of it. You could do a little house ruling on the easier to fix stuff too. The DMG also has alternate rules on short and long rests, for a more gritty and harder feel. The more dangerous rule for rests is a short rest is 8 hours and a long rest is 7 days. The back section of the DMG has a bunch of alternate or optional rules you may find fix some of your problems. Things like sanity and madness may work for more horrific creatures. Starting there may give you some more inspiration for optional rules or your own house rules. The wound tokens aren't a bad idea but the concept can be covered by things like the exhaustion rules, just reflavored a bit. Plus it's something else for both the DM and the PC to track, which can slow things down or be cumbersome. Try the Injuries and Exhaustion rules first and build from there.

 

[phantomK9]

My GM ran a 'white walker apocalypse' mini-campaign with the following house rules.

• When dropped to 0, you don't fall unconscious. However, you take one level of exhaustion from that damage.
• Any time you take damage while at 0, you add an extra level of exhaustion.
• While at 0 HP, you make a death save at the start of your turn. If you fail, you gain an extra level of exhaustion.
• You die when at 6 levels of exhaustion.
• While at 0 HP, you are treated as having two *temporary* levels of exhaustion, but a) these 'temporary' levels of exhaustion can't kill you, just knock you out, and b) if you're healed the temporary exhaustion goes away.
• Each day, if you get 8 hours of rest, you recover a level of exhaustion. 'Cure wounds' spells or other healing don't help, but restoration would (not that you'll ever get high enough level to cast that).

I have a very similar set of rules that I have been wanting to try with the following changes. Whenever you are the subject of a critical hit, rather than taking double damage, you take normal damage and gain a level of exhaustion. I also did away with death saves so would not have that roll for death save each turn.

 

[MrHotter]

The Dungeon Master's Guide has an 'Injury' Table in Chapter 9. They also have healing and resting options as well. Some of the options are to just let the players use hit dice to recover HPs at the end of long rests, or to make a short rest 8 hours and a long rest 7 days.

Another option is to explain the player's healing ability in your game so it makes sense. If every creature in the world could completely heal after a good nights sleep then large scale battles sure would be different. "Doctor, we have 50 wounded men coming in from the front lines!" "Quick, get them all tucked into bed and check on them in 8 hours!".

What I've done in my campaign is say that the players are like super heroes (or the people from the Highlander movie) and they are able to quickly recover from damage that would cripple a regular person or put them out of commission for weeks.

I let the players (and some major NPCs or creatures) use the standard short/long rest rules, but the common folk and creatures use the 8 hour short rest/ 7 day long rest rules.

 

[Shiroiken]

For your specific problem, I would recommend that HP don't automatically refresh to full after a Long Rest. Instead, the player rolls the character's full HD instead (which will average about 80-90% or so of max HP). Another option would be to have a Long Rest restore full HD, but no HP (allowing leftover HD from the day before to be spent).

The concepts of "dangerous" resting spaces is good, but if used should affect more than just HP. One option I've seen is you heal only 25% of your max HP (minimum 50% max HP) and you recover half your spell slots per spell level (minimum 1 per spell level). This keeps everyone weakened overall (except the Warlock, which is based mostly around the Short Rest), so that resting in the dungeon is a bad idea (even without the DM rolling a million wandering monster rolls).