Hey, same hat. I think that tying a lot of things to Hope / Stress puts some bounds on Reaction type stuff.
The nice part about off-turn actions (whether reactions or just a more flexible action economy) is that they keep people engaged throughout the combat narrative
and encourage players to collaborate. Those are both good things, so some mechanism for making that the default makes sense to me.
Vuln does a good job standing in for a wide variety of "you're easy to hurt," I think there's a couple of adversaries that inflict similar conditions to Frightened? Something that's "is harder for you to attack" isn't bad.
Toying around with expanding Taunted / Goaded / Marked (well not that since the word has other uses in DH but the classic 4eism), Weakened (half damage), Dazed (mark a stress before making action rolls? or, do 1 thing on your spotlight / no reactions), Slowed (move Very Close without making a roll).
I forgot about Daggerheart's use of "Vulnerable." You're right that that's a great idea that potentially handles a LOT of situations. I like Dazed and Slowed, and I think Taunted or some variant of it makes sense. Dragonbane uses Exhausted, Sickly, Dazed, Angry, Scared, and Disheartened, and ties each to an attribute (in order their equivalents of Str, Con, Dex, Int, Wis, and Cha). "Wounded" is a separate thing that comes from losing Hit Points.
I think never fully disabling is a good design ethos generally, so messing with the edge of that.
I kinda like the idea of PCs never being fully disabled. Something like letting an incapacitated PC take free and minor actions only, letting the PC fish a healing potion from their backpack one round, and drink it the next. If they do more than that, they have to, say, pass a CON save or pass out. Or they could take more substantial actions and risk being permanently killed (think Boromir in
The Fellowship of the Ring).
4 damage types up from 2? I think that just Magic is a little simplistic but neither do I want a proliferation; testing out an adversary feature of Armored / Warded (X) as a countdown during which the adversary can only mark Minor damage. So you always chip away, but it avoids "oops they alpha'd for Severe 3x" without doing the math of Resistance much! Plus now you can have weapons that Pierce or abilities that burn Wards...
Anyway, I'm having fun for now.
I'm in favor of force, fire, and cold as magical damage types, and piercing, bludgeoning and slashing as physical ones. But that's me. Although I'll note that most swords can be used to inflict piercing or slashing damage, and even bludgeoning as a fallback. People tend to forget that, which, as an aside, is why I hate mastery properties, but that's a separate rant.
And I also just realized I'm way off the topic of core mechanics. But the conversation has my creative juices flowing.
