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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Herremann the Wise" data-source="post: 5952118" data-attributes="member: 11300">A much needed and significant change in my opinion, but I would like to contend not that risky.I disagree and would suggest the following:***The highest privilege given to a character is the capacity to use their hit points rather than suffer wound damage. Now this is a privilege that will sometimes be denied the character but more of that later. The main thing is that a character takes wound damage unless they are allowed to use and can use their hit points. I suppose the typical two caveats are:- When a character runs out of hit points, they cannot use hit points and thus take wound damage.- Certain attacks are so skillful that they may deny the character the privilege of using their hit points to avoid it {the classic critical hit}.Wuxia Style; Arrow-CuttingI think this comes down to how you describe things as much as other factors. The bottom line is that if a character is allowed to use their hit points, the attack on them has been mostly ineffective; how that is described is really a style preference for the group. Avoiding wuxia style stuff should not be that difficult. Arrows are ineffective (do not deal wound damage) because the character uses their skill to avoid what would have been a certain shot (by expending hit points). Or by getting lucky, or the arrow glances off armor, or the arrow gets caught in their hat, or bounces painfully off of the toe of their boot, or is seemingly diverted as if Pelor himself had bent the arrows path. [Effectively this is a case of describing it in accordance with what the hit points are being attributed to: luck, skill, divine providence, morale, will to go on, capacity to turn a serious blow into a less serious one, mental and physical toughness etc. The halfling rogue is a lot of luck while the half-orc barbarian is a patchwork of scars, cuts and bruises.]The Single Successful Arrow ShotThere are times where this should be able to happen. However, for the sake of the game, there also needs to be a concession that most of the time, the character gets to use hit points to maximize death avoidance. Where you draw the line would be a classic case for a dial.Does the character get to use hit points if they are surprised or flat-footed? Do they get to use hit points if they are unaware of the attack? What if they are incapacitated? These are all reasonable situations where hit point use could be denied the character. However in these cases, perhaps the priest can react immediately to the attack with a blessing that allows the character to use their hit points when they otherwise would not be able to. Perhaps a halfling's luck allows them to use hit points when they otherwise would not be able to. Perhaps an allied fighter can get their shield in the way so that the ranged attack is possibly nullified (or not). Perhaps a rogue with "uncanny dodge" can never be denied their use of hit points due to surprise? Perhaps a character's armor can offer damage resistance to lessen the resulting wound?In other words, there is a heap of ways how you can stop that single shot killing the character from avoiding it completely to copping a non-mortal wound. BUT, if a 20th level character is asleep and cops a dagger directly through their braincase, they are copping one hell of a wound that they are almost certainly not telling their friends about. I think it important that this threat should always be there (even if such things are in the control of the DM). By having a relatively small amount of wound points, even a high level character can be killed in a single shot; they just have a whole heap more resources at their disposal to not find themselves in such a vulnerable position.The Arrow PincushionI think this is actually where the split model I'm promoting is at it's strongest. The only time an arrow is going to be stuck in a character's body is when it is causing obvious physical damage or wounding. Losing hit points means that the character has not been stuck bad enough to be wounded. Describe it how you want but there's your line. If the attack wounded the character, then make sure it sounds like it hurts. If the character has only lost hit points, make sure that you don't describe something that sounds like a significant wound. This provides clear directions for the DM in terms of description (or for the players if that is your style). What the pincushion thing is saying is "don't describe something that sounds completely ridiculous". Having wounds clearly separated allows you to do this.I think the above split system does too with the added bonus of not getting caught out when you attempt to restore hit points and heal wounds. Hit points are quickly restored and hyper-importantly can continue to act as a buffer, vastly reducing the slope of the potential death spiral. In addition, there is now a plethora of viable ways that hit points can be restored in combat. Morale based increases, second winds, leader encouragement and so on are believably applied. A fighter can believably menace multiple opponents, stripping them of hit points through demoralizing them without having to occasionally explain how such things kill such opponents. It just leaves such demoralized opponents incredibly vulnerable.Wounds however can take longer to heal as suits the group. Mundane healers can alleviate wounds well enough that it is a viable and dare I say become the standard way of dealing with such things. Divine healing becomes a gravy or perhaps a resource that is carefully metered out. Funnily enough, cure light wounds, cure critical wounds etc. actually make sense now. You don't have that weird circumstance where a cure critical wounds does almost nothing for a high level character. I would prefer such things in fact to be rituals that take time and are not spammed out like so many wands of cure light wounds.Perhaps the hardest thing is connecting hit points to wounds in terms of measurement. I think the most obvious unit of measurement is in fact the hit point. A 1 hit point wound takes 1 day for the average humanoid character to be not affected by. [It is not completely healed, it just at that point no longer affects the character any more.] A 9hp wound takes 9 days to heal. Wounds are treated individually (and are rare enough that this takes only minor accounting work). I have a set of rules in this regard that I designed a while ago but that might be best left for another time.So yeah, I still think this would be a pretty cool way to go for an advanced rule module and that it can be trimmed up for the core.Best RegardsHerremann the Wise</blockquote>

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