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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 9654481" data-attributes="member: 29398">In a way, this explains to me how 4e Healing Surges work better than anything else ever has.  On reading the initial 4e PH and DMG the HS system completely baffled me, so I largely ignored it and moved on to other things the 4e books had to offer.That said, of those four examples three of them can be fairly well emulated in a straight BP-FP system.  The Dark Sun one is the outlier - a straight-up hit points system can't replicate non-hp exhaustion the way HS or 5e's Exhaustion mechanic can.For the others: the second "punch them where it hurts" example could be (and in our system, sometimes is) replicated by having effects that not only take away some hit points but make those hit points impossible to recover by any means until x-amount (usually hours, sometimes days) has passed; and in one specific instance* in our system they can never be recovered at all.For the cursed gear example, we've got such a wide range of potential curses in our system already, ranging from mild annoyance to deadly-plus-extras and including a few that make it harder or even impossible to recover hit points, that adding one more would be a mere drop in the bucket. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />And as you say, rest and recovery - the fourth example above - is a bone of contention among supporters of different editions.  In our BP-FP system we just have it that BP are harder to rest back and also harder to cure; and even if ou're resting back FP only you still only get 10% (rounded up) of your total FP on an overnight or "long" rest in the field (safe-and-cozy is different, but for most play purposes field resting is what matters).Now, is the added complexity of a Surge or Exhaustion system worth it just to cover the Dark Sun (or similar) situation?  My honest answer there, looking at it from my own system's point of view, would be "maybe".* - the one specific instance is that shapeshifting or polymorphing takes a short bit of time; and any damage taken during that time is internalized as you shapeshift and thus permanently comes off your hit point total.  Rationale: to make an otherwise brokenly-powerful ability just a bit more risky.  Result: shapeshifters are more careful as to when they do it; I think the permanent damage loss has happened maybe twice in the 35-ish years I've had that rule.</blockquote>

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