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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Crazy Jerome" data-source="post: 5775165" data-attributes="member: 54877">I like for lethalness to vary even within those different kinds of fights in a given campaign, which is really my one unfulfilled dream for D&D combat. That is, I can pretty much make any version of D&D work out the way I want with house rules, but it gets too complicated to vary it quickly. That said, I think I'd like "still fighting/out of the fight" part primarely left in the hit point mechanic, but then be able to bypass it with a separate, very simple scale. This sounds a lot like the various Wounds/Vitality systems, but that isn't what I want. Those are merely two different kinds of hit points.  No, using 4E terms, what I'd like is for "minion" or "boss" or whatever to be a variable that changes, and this is the thing that interacts with any kind of action/fate points. Whereas hit points and healing are kept down to a low roar, and when something makes you lose them, you just lose them. A fully rested PC is never in a "minion" state. But throw enough "save and die" stuff, or fail enough death saves, or any number of such things on them, and their state drops through a handful of discrete options. Keep going, and they eventually turn into a Star Trek red shirt. At that point, if they catch a finger of death and fail their save, bye-bye. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /> I also suspect, though I'm really unsure, that in such a system, criticals would do no extra damage, but would move your state. So that means the first critical from an orc great axe or a bandit crossbow hurts, but doesn't really affect you that much in that fight. Get to "minion" state, though, and a crit can kill.  Less lethal games would give you more resources (magic, narrative plot protection, whatever is appropriate for the style of the game) to keep you out of minion status. More lethal games would let you get there quick if you aren't careful. In all of them, the hit points and damage would work more or less the same for everyone.</blockquote>

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