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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Levitator" data-source="post: 3342798" data-attributes="member: 40099">Oh boy,  I have been sooo hesitant to post this, but this forum seems to be a little more open-minded than others, so here it goes.I'd like to get some feedback on a houserule we've implemented that has been working really well for our group.  It's actually kind of 2 houserules combined to make combat a little more gritty without going to a WP/VP type of system.Basically, I've created a condition called "Battle Fatigue".  This stemmed from comments made by my players that they disliked the idea that a 100HP fighter fights just as well at 1 HP as he does at full.  I understand the basic logic behind the abstract concept of HP, but I wanted to make something that suited my players idea of combat better.Here's the way it works.  As you lose HP, you enter various stages of "Battle Fatigue" that affects your STR and DEX during combat.  It was designed to show the cumulative effects of parrying, swinging, taking shots, dodging, etc. and how those things would wear a fighter down.  We also use a non-specific descriptive during combat.  I should preface this by mentioning that we play a diceless game, using the autoroll feature in DM Genie to handle mechanics so that we can focus on description.  When a player gets hit, I don't tell them the exact number of HP they have taken in damage.  There are 2 reasons for this.  This first is that we've found that the more hidden the metagame concepts are, the more fun and immersive combat is.  The second is that by giving them only a general sense of their condition, it makes combat a little scarier.  We use Maptools as a VT and they have a halo system that allows you to put different colored halos on tokens.  Here are the 2 ideas combined into our system:100% HP - Green - Healthy75% HP - Yellow - Light Battle Fatigue (-1 STR, -1 DEX)50% HP - Orange - Medium Battle Fatigue (-2 STR, -2DEX)25% HP - Red - Heavy Battle Fatigue (-4 STR, -4 DEX)0% or Less - Black - Down (dead, unconscious, stunned, or otherwise laying on the ground and out of the fight)Once combat is over, and the players have a chance to look over their wounds and assess the damage, I give them their current totals.  Recovering from Battle Fatigue is directly related to HP, so a player at Medium Battle Fatigue would increase to Light Battle Fatigue before being healthy enough to fight at full strength.  I don't throw tons of encounters at my players per game day, so they have time between most encounters to natrually heal and also use potions, spells, etc. to get in shape for the next encounter.  Even at this, we usually have at least 5 encounters per gaming session.Using this system allows me as a DM the freedom to use descriptions rather than numbers and it's always exciting for players when they see halos changing colors.  My goal wasn't to make it look and play more videogamish, although I can totally see how it looks that way.  The idea was to create a system that works with our diceless style of gameplay and keep the focus on description and not numbers.  We use a lot of variants that DM Genie tracks for me and it gives me a detailed description in the combat log so I know exactly what happened.  The other variants we use are Armor as DR, a modified version of the Defense Bonus, Facing Variant and the Opposed Defense Roll Variant.  The group feels that these things work well together to give us gritty but quick combat (mostly thanks to DM Genie and its autoroll feature).I would like to get some feedback on this type of HP tracking system.  Don't worry too much about being negative about it, because it works great for our group and I have no plans to abandon it.  But, I would like to use the feedback to make any tweaks that stand out from other DM and player perspectives, and try to make it even better.I should also mention that we use another houserule that eliminates instantaneous healing from potions and spells.  We have a system that breaks healing into 5 levels of potency, with level 1 potency(system levels not D&D levels, in D&D terms, level 1 potency would be potions created by or spells cast by 1st-3rd level healers) heal at the rate of 1 HP every 8 rounds, up to level 5 potency potions and spells(10th-12th level healers.  We peak at 12th and then buy feats, skills etc., similar to <a href="http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=187897" target="_blank">this thread</a>  on this style of advancement)which heal at the rate of 2 HP/rd.  It's still fast enough to be miraculous, but eliminates the potion chugging fighter.  My players felt that this was one area that felt too videogamish in D&D and this was my attempt to fix it and still have it fit in with our style of gameplay.So, let 'er rip!  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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