Health Die Mechanic Idea

[Thourne]

Have you looked at Cortex Prime/Tales of Xadia?
There may be something useful in their stress and trauma system you could find useful or even the system itself.
Stress basically resets quickly between story beats where trauma hangs around for a while.
Both reflect the difficulty of bearing them by adding dice to your opponents dice pool.

 

[CubicsRube]

One thing that a mechanic like that could do is increase uncertainty and potentially tension when taking damage.

It would mean that that one hit you take could be a mere scratch of it could connect and really hurt you.

I'd like to see if it works like that in practice though.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Have you looked at Cortex Prime/Tales of Xadia?
There may be something useful in their stress and trauma system you could find useful or even the system itself.
Stress basically resets quickly between story beats where trauma hangs around for a while.
Both reflect the difficulty of bearing them by adding dice to your opponents dice pool.

That does sound interesting. My system has PCs roll everything, but that’s easily translated into just decreasing the player’s dice pool.

One thing that a mechanic like that could do is increase uncertainty and potentially tension when taking damage.

It would mean that that one hit you take could be a mere scratch of it could connect and really hurt you.

I'd like to see if it works like that in practice though.

Exactly, but without much or any potential for one-shot kills like low level D&D.

My worry is that it also has potential to remove any consequence from small hits.