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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ainamacar" data-source="post: 5806945" data-attributes="member: 70709">No worries, a small slip of the keyboard. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />In basic 3.5 one starts dying whenever hit points drop below 0.  That means to keep lethality identical one would always have to have the creature start dying when nonlethal damage exceeds current hp, because that is precisely when it has taken its maximum hit points of total damage from some source or other.  (I'm assuming that in vanilla 3.5 all the damage is lethal.  If non-lethal damage is common in vanilla 3.5, which it is not in my experience, then my argument does not stand.)  To remain identically lethal to vanilla 3.5 it would then have to die after taking 10 additional damage from any source.I get what you're saying, though: if every effect does half lethal and half non-lethal and healing always heals them in equal portions then a creature will never go unconscious *unless* it's already bloodied, and so it is effectively identical to the normal rules.  Of course, if it's always 50/50 then what is the point of the rule in the first place?  It would be like having two separate hit point pools with the same maximum, and they each go up and down identically.  If other splits between lethal and non-lethal damage are possible, though, then it would be possible for a creature with 50 maximum hp to have 30 current hp and 20 non-lethal damage, and it would have taken 50 total points of damage but would not (using your bloodied rule) start dying like in vanilla 3.5.I guess it's inevitable that a system like this can, in a given encounter, only remain identically lethal to a pure hp system while keeping the death and dying rules unchanged if 0 hp and 0 wounds can cause a creature to start dying.  If this system supports knocking creatures unconscious without causing them to start dying there either needs to be a separate way to do so common to both systems (seems ugly) or there must be a wound threshold beyond which a creature starts dying.  If it is the latter, the game is inherently less lethal than the vanilla version if no other changes are made.  So the conclusion must be that supporting unconscious but not dying characters without changing average lethality in a given encounter requires changes to the death and dying rules instead.There is a competing factor which might balance things out again, but it only does so in a campaign-average sense, not the encounter-average sense, and the precise balance will be campaign and play-style dependent.  Suppose two identical parties, A and B, start a given encounter with identical resources.  In particular, identical starting hit points and healing resources.  However, party A uses the normal hit points system and party B uses the vitality/wound system where there is some threshold > 0 wound points between being knocked out or unconscious and dying.  In this particular encounter party B is less likely to die, because they can take more than their normal maximum hit points of damage and not start dying.  However, if the wound points are actually more difficult or slower to heal, then the attrition means they are likely to start the next encounter with fewer hit points and healing resources than party A.  So in the second encounter party A has better resources but a less forgiving death and dying system.  With enough attrition eventually party B will experience an encounter with greater average lethality than it presents for party A, despite the more forgiving falling unconscious rules that benefit party B.  The details of when this occur will depend greatly on the implementation of the vitality/wound system, but as long as attrition plays a sufficient role in encounters it is possible for these two campaigns with identical parties to experience equal overall lethality.  If attrition plays no role (i.e. 15 minute adventuring day is standard for that campaign) then party B has strictly lower average encounter and campaign lethality than party A.At the very least this can start to give some ideas about how to keep overall campaign lethality similar to the pure hit points module.  If we know that the vitality/wound system contributes so much average attrition after each encounter, we may be able to figure out falling unconscious rules such that after k encounters the attrition will on average cause the characters to start dying instead.  For example, maybe party B is better off in the first encounter, basically even in the second encounter, and worse off in the third encounter of the day. So a fair guess might be that parties A and B have equal average lethality over a typical 3-encounter day.  By knowing such a baseline a DM could make informed decisions about how much to throw at the party in order to achieve the level of lethality he wants, or even if he should changes the unconscious vs. dying threshold to fit his needs.</blockquote>

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