pemerton said:
(1) Without an injury penalty mechanic, nothing in the fiction signals that my flesh is being rent by swords and falls and arrows. Therefore, it is not clear, in the fiction, how losing hit points is any different from losing fate points - it seems a pointless mechanical distinction completely disjoined from any fictional realisation.
I don't know what you mean by "in the fiction."
The fiction at the table is just what the DM describes, and this, like the 5e HP notation, gives the DM guidance on how to describe various injuries. Took an arrow to the knee? It's HP damage unless fate intervenes, in which case, it's not.
It's an important distinction since, as you can plainly see, people have different ways that they conceive of this event.
(2) It is therefore not clear, at least to me, how your suggestion makes room for the "inspiration helps me recover and/or push on" trope. Adding fate points doesn't seem to represent pushing on - because, in the fiction, it's largely indistinguishable from knitting together flesh, and there are also no wounds to be pushed through. And adding hit points seems in any event to occupy whatever "push on" space there might be to the same extent as hit points.
Inspiration heals Fate. Fate lets you fight on longer, since you can substitute it for HP and it comes back faster. If your buddy inspires you to fight on for longer, you're going to fight on for longer than if no one did that (if you use Fate).
(3) Under your approach I can't do the Aragorn recovery scene in the second LotR movie -because if Aragorn is unconscious, under your system he is at 0 hp, and being at 0 hp no amount of inspiration from Arwen can restore him. That is a big blow against your system, that it cannot produce this sort of classic fantasy motif.
Dude, this is a design you can manifest in a hundred different ways.
My fave? Aragorn has regen.
Another? Aaragorn has a "Tenacious Destiny" ability that lets him fight on as long as he has Fate left, regardless of his HP. If you wanted every character to constantly be doing that, it's not difficult to put that into a Fate module.
Oh, a third: You might also rule that Arwen being a magical mystical elfy maiden lady has a magical mystical elfy ability that magically mystically elfily gives him HP back. Kinda like how her pops had all that accelerated healing back in his villa upstate.
There's more where that came from. Or you might be fine with the fact that narratives and games have different demands on their mechanics.
You don't need to have inspiration recovering sword wounds to do this. D&D has had boars that fight on at negative HP since forever. There's no concept of an HP system in which that isn't somehow possible.
(4) Under your approach, I can't have a Nordic/Celtic master of words, who simply through his speech can unravel the sustaining essence of a thing, and leave it destroyed and worthless. Vicious Mockery is closer to these classic fantasy tropes than any artillerist or flying mage of the normal RPG variety.
Dude, they can deal HP damage.
That's the distinction between It's Magic And Thus Deadly and It's Just a Word And Thus Not. You can do either one. You can do both at once, even. The system don't care. The systems like, "You want your metaphors to be absurdly physical. Mokay, boss, here's how."
So...all your problems solved, and it's not even 5 pm. I bet this is your face right now:
Gonna go invent world peace, be back in an hour.
