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Message: <blockquote data-quote="clearstream" data-source="post: 8958646" data-attributes="member: 71699">Another approach could be increasing lethality - i.e. the risk of continuing to the combat - rather than imposing a penalty (or bonus). With that in mind I plan to playtest something like this<ol> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Below half your hit points you have the wounded condition.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Some weapons and other effects (e.g. spells or monster attacks) care about that condition.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">The anchoring definition for "care" is to roll one more of the base damage dice (e.g. roll one more d8 for a longsword) </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">With the option to escalate that on about the order of magnitude of <ol> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">additionally inflicting one death save failure if the attack causes the target to fall to 0HP or lower OR </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">force a roll on the Lingering Injuries tables OR </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">inflict a different condition like prone</li> </ol></li> </ol>So my idea here is that the wounded condition itself does nothing. Instead, it provides a handle for a group to connect other rules to, for example weapons with additional lethality. This is based on the PHB 197 call out that Elsewhere it is stated that And - regarding NPC and monster HP - it is suggested in the DMG that below half hit points a creature be described as "bloodied".How does my suggestion meet your goals? <ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">There is no death spiral in the sense of accumulating penalties making success less likely and leading to a depressing downward trend.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Instead, combat becomes more lethal once you burn your will to live and luck, and are down to your physical and mental toughness. The end in such circumstances may come suddenly.</li> </ul>The intent is that players will prefer to find a way out of combat once on low hit points. I have contemplated also tweaking some healing spells - such as healing word - so that the can't benefit creatures with the wounded condition. Whether that is a good idea or not, I think it shows how simply creating a signifier in the system to represent the way hit points are described, and then giving that signifier no properties, but rather letting other system features trigger additional behaviours based on it, might afford strong designability which can be cashed out by groups in different ways.The way I want to cash it out is to have characters reach a point where they are "bloodied" (be that physical or spiritual) and start to see that although they can continue fighting (without having to track sundry bonuses or penalties) doing so will come with escalated risk against some foes.</blockquote>

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