EscherEnigma
Adventurer
Anytime I come across the "I want to add more realism to hit points!" argument, I think back to the old d20 Star Wars RPG, which separated HP into "wound points" and "vitality points".
Vitality was basically what we normlly characterize "HP" as. Luck, flesh wounds, stamina, etc. In most cases, you have to go through Vitality Points before you can touch the Wound Points. Vitality Points were relatively easy to restore, and increased with level.
Wound Points were the "damage to body". Take 1 point of wound point damage, and you start suffering penalties. Take too many at once and you can lose a limb (this was Star Wars, after all. You need a way to dramatically chop off hands and arms). Recovering this was slow un-aided, and even with advanced healing tech was slow. These did not increase with level, and I think were based on Con.
Oh, and critical hits, instead of doing extra damage or something, went straight to wound-points. So combat was way more dangerous since a single lucky crit could basically take someone out of combat. With magical healing it probably wouldn't be quite as bad, but still serious.
Something like that system could probably work. Have healing magic work on vitality, but make it work much less on wound points.
Bottom-line though, is that something like 95% of the narrative inconsistencies of HP are solved by separting out the "bodily injury" and the "getting winded" parts. But there's probably a reason you don't see that kind of system used in D&D.
Vitality was basically what we normlly characterize "HP" as. Luck, flesh wounds, stamina, etc. In most cases, you have to go through Vitality Points before you can touch the Wound Points. Vitality Points were relatively easy to restore, and increased with level.
Wound Points were the "damage to body". Take 1 point of wound point damage, and you start suffering penalties. Take too many at once and you can lose a limb (this was Star Wars, after all. You need a way to dramatically chop off hands and arms). Recovering this was slow un-aided, and even with advanced healing tech was slow. These did not increase with level, and I think were based on Con.
Oh, and critical hits, instead of doing extra damage or something, went straight to wound-points. So combat was way more dangerous since a single lucky crit could basically take someone out of combat. With magical healing it probably wouldn't be quite as bad, but still serious.
Something like that system could probably work. Have healing magic work on vitality, but make it work much less on wound points.
Bottom-line though, is that something like 95% of the narrative inconsistencies of HP are solved by separting out the "bodily injury" and the "getting winded" parts. But there's probably a reason you don't see that kind of system used in D&D.