Narrating Hit Points - no actual "damage"

[Celebrim]

If you are agreeing with me, then why are you arguing with me?

Because I'm not agreeing with you obviously. I have no interest in proving or disproving whether hit points are realistic. I don't even consider it a very interesting or relevant question. No RPG system is realistic, and every attempt I've seen to create a 'realistic' system only ends up being less realistic in its narration in practice (see Dwarf fortress for an excellent example of engaging in design rituals to support realism that have outcomes that are wildly unrealistic, even though DF delves deeper into calculations that any table top RPG could support).

I do have a very big interest in discussing the rituals of play, fictional positioning and how they integrate with the rules, because that's what I see the original question as being primarily about.

So I need to back up I guess and make everything I'm talking about clear.

In D&D, practically everything consists of a single procedural loop that goes something like this. The DM introduces some fictional positioning, like "You are all in a tavern." or "You are standing at the entrance of a dark and gloomy cave.". The players can ask questions about this fictional positioning to make sure that what they are imagining matches what is in the DMs head, and at some point once they are satisfied that they understand the fictional positioning they make some proposition about what their character does. Quite often, this proposition is 'doubtful', meaning that it's not obvious whether the proposition succeeds or fails. The rules provide a detailed but incomplete guide to adjudicating the results of doubtful propositions that usually involves some sort of randomizer (dice) that dictates the fortunes of the player, and then the DM generally takes the lead in narrating new fictional positioning based on the results of the fortune rolls. The loop then repeats.

With me so far?

Problems can (and will) arise if this procedural loop is subtly skewed by a misunderstanding of some sort. In this case, one common misunderstanding is one which you are introducing in all of your examples. As far as you are concerned these examples prove that D&D isn't realistic. I could really care less about that question, as to me it feels like some retro throwback to the understanding of RPGs that belongs in the 1980s and ignores the last nearly 30 years of thought and discovery concerning how RPGs work. But I am concerned that your examples are misleading novice DMs or players regarding how to play D&D.

The problem with all of your examples is they assuming the narrative and the new fictional positioning BEFORE rolling the fortune dice. Having assumed the new fictional positioning you assert that the rules are unrealistic because they do not produce the outcome you have already assumed and dictated as the 'realistic' outcome. And that's wrong on just about every level, both as to whether it proves D&D is 'unrealistic' and as it pertains to how you play D&D.

Your first example was that of a high level fighter being attacked by a person with a great axe. Your argument was that if a 1st level fighter could realistically be killed by one blow of a great axe, then realistically no one should ever have more hit points than one has as a first level fighter. And to be frank, that's nonsense. That's because mechanically the rules say nothing about the fictional positioning of a great axe blow. The rules aren't interested in trying to generate that (in the way that say Role Master is interested in that). In the procedural cycle described above, it's the job of the DM to generate the fictional positioning of a great axe blow after consulting the fortune.

D&D has always been very clear about the fact that the hit points of a PC do not represent merely the ability to sustain a wound. The high level fighter has no more or only little more ability to sustain a wound than the low level fighter. The rules state that the blow of an axe deals say 1d12 damage. The DM then narrates some result as the outcome of sustaining 1d12 damage. But this goes entirely wrong if you first assume that an unarmored character has been struck a solid blow by axe and ONLY THEN roll to see how much damage has been taken. D&D does not work that way and is not intended to work that way. If you assume that an unarmored characters just stands there and receives solid blows by a great axe, and then complain that 1d12 damage in no way reflects the outcome of this fictional positioning then the appropriate answer is "Of course it doesn't. But you are very confused about how to play D&D."

The fictional positioning that D&D assumes is that a combat is taking place and someone is armed with a great axe and someone is trying to avoid being cloven in twain. The fortune rolls abstract out the details of this combat and generate an abstract result - the person trying to avoid being cloven in twain may or may not be struck by an axe and if they are they take 1d12 damage. But notice we have so far not said anything really about the fictional positioning with respect to the blow of the axe. The fictional positioning can only be constructed after we perform the fortune roll and inspect the results. The DM then provides fictional positioning that supports those results as dictated by that DM's setting's internal logic. That is to say, if 12 damage is rolled and this indicates the PC is not slain, the DM constructs whatever narration makes the fact that the PC was not slain plausible given the setting's tropes. For example if the PC had 95 hit points, and took 12 damage, the DM might say something like, "You leap back from the blow, but you aren't quite quick enough. With a deceptive lack of pain, the axe whizzes by leaving a long but shallow cut on your upper shoulder, as neat as if someone drew a razor across your chest" If on the other hand the PC had 14 hit points, the DM might say something like, "You duck under the first blow, but the back swing comes far faster than you expected. You try to regain your balance and leap out of the way, but its too late. The axe cleaves a huge gash on your right side, and possibly fractures a rib. You sway with the pain. Only your adrenaline is keeping you on your feet now, and another hit like that will probably be the last thing you ever feel." Or if the PC had 2 hit points, the rules dictate that the PC is now instantly dead, so the DM might narrate, "The axe comes around again. Were you completely healthy, you might have evaded it, but physically drained as you are you can only watch in horror as the axe passes below your chin. There is an instant of pain and then you know only blackness. Your friends see you've been almost completely decapitated, your body slumping to the ground in a great splash of blood which is partly slung onto nearby stone wall by the passage of the blade."

What you do not do, and what is not really supported by the rules is put this narration and fictional positioning first, and then make a fortune roll. For example, the game does not support, "The great axe hits you solidly in the chest.. You take 4 damage." That sounds ludicrous because it is, and Gygax is in his discussion of the meaning of hit points trying to explain why that is wrong. Of course, on the other hand, a DM is free to decide that hit points really are 100% ability to absorb damage, and in that case your game world has the trope that the PC's are literal superheroes whose hardened bodies can at least partially absorb the heavy blows of an axe. However, that world is not inherently or unavoidably the outcome of playing D&D by the rules, and indeed quite the contrary.

Note that all the different narrations and fictional outcomes pertained to 12 points of damage. That 12 damage represents nothing concrete. It's only a guideline for the DM to generate narrative that pertains to a particular context.

Similarly, you make the same mistake when you describe the fireball.

In your example of play you implicitly are imagining a fireball or a breath weapon as filling an area with a uniformly hot fire that uniformly effects and consumes everything within its area of effect. If that were the case, then a saving throw or the idea of dodging the fire would be ridiculous. The problem is that not only are you first narrating the outcome and then asking why the fortune roll doesn't support your arbitrarily chosen narrative, but there is every reason to believe that the rules do not support the picture that is in your head as to what a fireball looks like. Notice that for example, fireballs do a random amount of damage. This suggests that the flames of the fireball are not at all uniformly distributed, but are in some areas very hot and in some areas nearly absent. Likewise, the rules suggest you can take various actions to evade a fireball without moving a noticeable distance from where you are standing. This suggests the flames not only aren't uniformly distributed, but they may have directionality, and that even though the effect is 'instantaneous' for game purposes the event might simply occur over such a small fraction of a round that its duration is not meaningful for game purposes. In other words, I deny the picture you are imagining in your head has anything to do with the fireball of the game. Rather, fireball works in the game according to the procedural cycle I've described. A character makes the proposition, "I cast fireball". The game explains the mechanics of adjudicating the fortune of this this proposition. From the generated fortune, you create a narration that explains the fortune and the new fictional positioning. That is, a fireball is presumably some swirling ball of fire and those within it are variously effected by it according to the dictates of luck and their own skill at evading such things. Some characters might be burnt to a crisp. Others might only be singed. That is in and of itself not implausible. It only become implausible when you first erroneously assumed an outcome before testing the fortune.

This matters. This matters a lot. Because if you don't engage with D&D according to the way it tells you to engage with it, you are going to get really frustrated and have a bunch of problems that you could otherwise avoid.

 

[Lanefan]

How are hit points something separate from damage (the way you lose hit points) and healing (the way you get them back), and why do you think the way those systems work in 5e is a problem to be solved?

The losing of hit points from taking damage in whatever ways works fine while being at least a tiny bit realistic - it's narratable in ways that make sense to (pretty much) all.

The recovery is the problem - it's way too fast; and the believability and narrativity issues get worse the closer you get to dead before being right as rain the next morning.

Hence, my comment about the problem being with the recovery and resting rules, not the hit point mechanic itself.

Personally, I'm fine with a character's hit points being a count down to possible death. When none are left, a character's life hangs in the balance. When a character has plenty, s/he's a "hard man fe dead", as the old Prince Buster song goes. To me, that works just fine and isn't a problem at all.

Absolutely. But you're talking about the losing-hit-points part, which I've already said works fine, and ignoring the recovering-hit-points bit, which doesn't work worth a hill o' beans.

Well, I think that depends on what your goals of play actually are. D&D historically has attempted to be a compromise between playability and verisimilitude to being inside a beloved fantasy story. That is to say, people wanted to play a game, but that game was one they wanted to remind them of the fantasy adventure fiction of Fritz Leiber, JRR Tolkien, Robert Howard, Michael Morcock and so forth. Over time, D&D has become increasingly self-referential and less connected to anything external to it. It's become a genera of its own, and one that a person that has never played D&D can nonetheless be familiar with owing to the large degree of penetration of D&D tropes into the wider gaming community. People now 'know' what a 'Ranger' is, even if that ranger looks nothing at all like Tolkien's Rangers that inspired the D&D ranger. Likewise people have expectations about what a 'Druid' does that have no real relation to having read any historical speculation about druids. Likewise with 'levels' and 'experience' and 'hit points' and a great many other D&Disms.

Perhaps, though there's also the option of striving to correct these mis-perceptions at every opportunity (e.g. make Rangers more like Tolkein Rangers again and never utter the name Drizz't; rename Druids to Nature Clerics as that's what they really are, etc.).

And people don't have to care about the narrative creating verisimilitude to anything, most especially to reality. That's an aesthetic choice. Arguably D&D's latest edition is mostly about having verisimilitude to itself.

The latest edition and the one before that, I think; and in neither instance was this the right direction to go IMO as it discourages immersion and - following on from a bad side effect of how 3e played - encourages a more mechanics-first approach.

That, and even in the various fantasy books on which the game is in theory based the heroes sometimes get beat to ratguano and have to spend some time recovering; though this sort of thing is admittedly seen more in more recent fiction than the '50s and '60s pulp.

Now I agree that many of 5e's aesthetic choices don't fully appeal to me since I cut my teeth on this game like 35 years ago, but I do understand why they were done and what the default game was trying to create.

I think 5e's aesthetic is better than the two editions before it (i.e. 3e and 4e), but there's still loads of room for improvement.

Lanefan

 

[Lanefan]

In D&D, practically everything consists of a single procedural loop that goes something like this. The DM introduces some fictional positioning, like "You are all in a tavern." or "You are standing at the entrance of a dark and gloomy cave.". The players can ask questions about this fictional positioning to make sure that what they are imagining matches what is in the DMs head, and at some point once they are satisfied that they understand the fictional positioning they make some proposition about what their character does. Quite often, this proposition is 'doubtful', meaning that it's not obvious whether the proposition succeeds or fails. The rules provide a detailed but incomplete guide to adjudicating the results of doubtful propositions that usually involves some sort of randomizer (dice) that dictates the fortunes of the player, and then the DM generally takes the lead in narrating new fictional positioning based on the results of the fortune rolls. The loop then repeats.

With me so far?

Problems can (and will) arise if this procedural loop is subtly skewed by a misunderstanding of some sort. In this case, one common misunderstanding is one which you are introducing in all of your examples. As far as you are concerned these examples prove that D&D isn't realistic. I could really care less about that question, as to me it feels like some retro throwback to the understanding of RPGs that belongs in the 1980s and ignores the last nearly 30 years of thought and discovery concerning how RPGs work. But I am concerned that your examples are misleading novice DMs or players regarding how to play D&D.

The problem with all of your examples is they assuming the narrative and the new fictional positioning BEFORE rolling the fortune dice. Having assumed the new fictional positioning you assert that the rules are unrealistic because they do not produce the outcome you have already assumed and dictated as the 'realistic' outcome. And that's wrong on just about every level, both as to whether it proves D&D is 'unrealistic' and as it pertains to how you play D&D.

Your first example was that of a high level fighter being attacked by a person with a great axe. Your argument was that if a 1st level fighter could realistically be killed by one blow of a great axe, then realistically no one should ever have more hit points than one has as a first level fighter. And to be frank, that's nonsense. That's because mechanically the rules say nothing about the fictional positioning of a great axe blow. The rules aren't interested in trying to generate that (in the way that say Role Master is interested in that). In the procedural cycle described above, it's the job of the DM to generate the fictional positioning of a great axe blow after consulting the fortune.

D&D has always been very clear about the fact that the hit points of a PC do not represent merely the ability to sustain a wound. The high level fighter has no more or only little more ability to sustain a wound than the low level fighter. The rules state that the blow of an axe deals say 1d12 damage. The DM then narrates some result as the outcome of sustaining 1d12 damage. But this goes entirely wrong if you first assume that an unarmored character has been struck a solid blow by axe and ONLY THEN roll to see how much damage has been taken. D&D does not work that way and is not intended to work that way. If you assume that an unarmored characters just stands there and receives solid blows by a great axe, and then complain that 1d12 damage in no way reflects the outcome of this fictional positioning then the appropriate answer is "Of course it doesn't. But you are very confused about how to play D&D."

The fictional positioning that D&D assumes is that a combat is taking place and someone is armed with a great axe and someone is trying to avoid being cloven in twain. The fortune rolls abstract out the details of this combat and generate an abstract result - the person trying to avoid being cloven in twain may or may not be struck by an axe and if they are they take 1d12 damage. But notice we have so far not said anything really about the fictional positioning with respect to the blow of the axe. The fictional positioning can only be constructed after we perform the fortune roll and inspect the results. The DM then provides fictional positioning that supports those results as dictated by that DM's setting's internal logic. That is to say, if 12 damage is rolled and this indicates the PC is not slain, the DM constructs whatever narration makes the fact that the PC was not slain plausible given the setting's tropes. For example if the PC had 95 hit points, and took 12 damage, the DM might say something like, "You leap back from the blow, but you aren't quite quick enough. With a deceptive lack of pain, the axe whizzes by leaving a long but shallow cut on your upper shoulder, as neat as if someone drew a razor across your chest" If on the other hand the PC had 14 hit points, the DM might say something like, "You duck under the first blow, but the back swing comes far faster than you expected. You try to regain your balance and leap out of the way, but its too late. The axe cleaves a huge gash on your right side, and possibly fractures a rib. You sway with the pain. Only your adrenaline is keeping you on your feet now, and another hit like that will probably be the last thing you ever feel." Or if the PC had 2 hit points, the rules dictate that the PC is now instantly dead, so the DM might narrate, "The axe comes around again. Were you completely healthy, you might have evaded it, but physically drained as you are you can only watch in horror as the axe passes below your chin. There is an instant of pain and then you know only blackness. Your friends see you've been almost completely decapitated, your body slumping to the ground in a great splash of blood which is partly slung onto nearby stone wall by the passage of the blade."

What you do not do, and what is not really supported by the rules is put this narration and fictional positioning first, and then make a fortune roll. For example, the game does not support, "The great axe hits you solidly in the chest.. You take 4 damage." That sounds ludicrous because it is, and Gygax is in his discussion of the meaning of hit points trying to explain why that is wrong. Of course, on the other hand, a DM is free to decide that hit points really are 100% ability to absorb damage, and in that case your game world has the trope that the PC's are literal superheroes whose hardened bodies can at least partially absorb the heavy blows of an axe. However, that world is not inherently or unavoidably the outcome of playing D&D by the rules, and indeed quite the contrary.

All of the above just makes a great case for a body-point fatigue-point system (or wound-vitality, if one prefers those terms).

All characters have but a few body points, and these never change once set. What you gain with levels are fatigue points.

Swinging a greataxe against a defenceless opponent, or slitting a sleeping person's throat with a dagger, gives auto-kill on a decent to-hit roll and damage rolled normally that goes straight to bodies (bypassing fatigues) on a poor-ish to-hit roll.

A bp-fp system also solves the narrative problems of fast recovery after major injuries by simply having it that bp don't heal nearly as fast as fp, and making them more difficult to cure with magic or other means than are fp.

This matters. This matters a lot. Because if you don't engage with D&D according to the way it tells you to engage with it, you are going to get really frustrated and have a bunch of problems that you could otherwise avoid.

Or one can just change the way it tells you to engage with it, by kitbashing the system; and this is my preferred solution.

Lanefan

 

[darkrose50]

Hit Points, Vitality Points, Wound Points, Damage, and Becoming Bloodied

• Hit points are part luck, part soul, part vigor, part size, and part combat training.
• Hit points are a larger pool of points split between two sub-pools of points: Vitality points and wound points.
• Vitality points are the first half of a character’s hit points (rounded up) that represent the ability to lessen the impact of a potential physical wound to the point of avoidance. Vitality could represent one or more of the following examples: strenuous parry, tiring dodge, impactful block, lost footing, damaged gear, cut or rip in clothing, bumps, bruises, loss of attention, becoming distracted, loss of composure, becoming frazzled, becoming sweaty, or getting dirty.
• Wound points are the second half of a character's hit points (round down). Taking wound point damage represents an actual wound. To taking wound point damage is to become bloodied.

Hit Points and Bloodied Damage

• Bloodied is a keyword to describe someone who has taken sufficient damage to dip into the second half of a character's hit points (wound points) and represents a serious wound. Under most circumstances becoming bloodied is quite apparent.

Hit Points and Healing Wound Point (Bloodied) Damage

• Magical healing will heal wound points (bloodied hit points) damage.
• Wound points (bloodied damage) are not healed during a short or long rest.
• Access to magical healing is profoundly useful and coveted.
• A number of Wound Points hit point damage may be healed with a week's rest. The base is the maximum total characters Wound Points. Quarter the amount will be healed without a doctor (possible infection save DC 15). Half the amount will be healed with an unsuccessful medicine roll (possible infection save DC 10). The entire amount will be healed with a successful medicine roll. The medicine DC for a week’s rest is DC 15 - Constitution score of the patient.

 

[Celebrim]

All of the above just makes a great case for a body-point fatigue-point system (or wound-vitality, if one prefers those terms).

I've long ago given up on the idea of the one perfect system that does everything well. Everything is a trade off, and ultimately it depends on your priorities at your table and what sort of experience you want to create. Wound-Vitality systems aren't more realistic than strict hit points systems, but they do solve particular problems with unrealistic effects in certain edge cases. They also open up a ton of new problems.

Swinging a greataxe against a defenceless opponent, or slitting a sleeping person's throat with a dagger, gives auto-kill on a decent to-hit roll and damage rolled normally that goes straight to bodies (bypassing fatigues) on a poor-ish to-hit roll.

There are a lot of different ways to implement this. 1e AD&D just said, "They're dead.", period in cases like that. In 3e AD&D they came up with the coup de grace rules to handle that edge case, which guaranteed a critical hit and produced a difficult saving throw to avoid death. Both systems involve trade offs. Would-vitality systems don't generally speaking produce inherently more realistic results here without also tweaking the rules to handle the edge case. For example, a naïve rules system for wound-vitality that tried to model slitting a sleeping person's throat would send normal knife damage straight to body, and find on average this wasn't enough to kill the victim.

And this neglects the very real and important fact that damage isn't what usually kills someone anyway.

So sure, you can handle some edge cases better and that might work better for you if you wanted a system that prioritized stealth kills and incapacitating foes and depending on how you implemented it, random sudden death. But all of that creates its own problems.

Or one can just change the way it tells you to engage with it, by kitbashing the system; and this is my preferred solution.

I've house ruled the heck out of just about every game I've ever run, so it's my preferred solution as well. That said, not everyone is a skilled rules-smith, and if you do kitbash a system you own the results.

 

[Lanefan]

I've long ago given up on the idea of the one perfect system that does everything well. Everything is a trade off, and ultimately it depends on your priorities at your table and what sort of experience you want to create. Wound-Vitality systems aren't more realistic than strict hit points systems, but they do solve particular problems with unrealistic effects in certain edge cases. They also open up a ton of new problems.

Perhaps worth its own discussion. We've used a bp-fp system in 1e for well over 30 years and it hasn't generated any major problems that I can see.

It adds a bit of complication in that all curative spells roll different dice depending on whether you're curing bp or fp; and if you go below 0 (death is at -10) you can't be cured above bp at all for a length of time set by how far below 0 you went. Easy enough to track.

There are a lot of different ways to implement this. 1e AD&D just said, "They're dead.", period in cases like that. In 3e AD&D they came up with the coup de grace rules to handle that edge case, which guaranteed a critical hit and produced a difficult saving throw to avoid death. Both systems involve trade offs. Would-vitality systems don't generally speaking produce inherently more realistic results here without also tweaking the rules to handle the edge case. For example, a naïve rules system for wound-vitality that tried to model slitting a sleeping person's throat would send normal knife damage straight to body, and find on average this wasn't enough to kill the victim.

Exactly; but easily solved by the to-hit roll. Roll well (say, 5 more than you need to hit at all) and it's auto-kill; roll less but still hit and you're doing straight-to-bodies damage, which probably won't kill but will very likely put to 0 or below, provoking a consciousness check. Roll extremely poorly and you muffed the attempt completely, but that's a different thing.

And this neglects the very real and important fact that damage isn't what usually kills someone anyway.

I'd say well over half the deaths - maybe even 3/4 of them at low levels - in my games are due to damage, be it by weapon or area-effect spell or falling or whatever.

Thinking back over my last few sessions where my players-in-character kinda bit off more than they could really chew (a frontal assault on a defended stronghold full of ice trolls), they've lost four party members - one to a long fall and three to being shredded by the ice trolls: all four deaths came via straight damage.

I've house ruled the heck out of just about every game I've ever run, so it's my preferred solution as well. That said, not everyone is a skilled rules-smith, and if you do kitbash a system you own the results.

Oh, I know this all too well.

Lanefan

 

[DEFCON 1]

Because I'm not agreeing with you obviously. I have no interest in proving or disproving whether hit points are realistic.

Then I really have nothing more to add. I was speaking to those people who were trying to make some semblance of aligning the narrative to the mechanics, and what I thought one of the first things they'd probably have to do to start with to make it kind of work.

If you don't care about ANY of it... well, good for you. But obviously then you aren't the audience I was speaking to, so there's no point in discussing it with you.

 

[FrogReaver]

Hit Points, Vitality Points, Wound Points, Damage, and Becoming Bloodied

• Hit points are part luck, part soul, part vigor, part size, and part combat training.
• Hit points are a larger pool of points split between two sub-pools of points: Vitality points and wound points.
• Vitality points are the first half of a character’s hit points (rounded up) that represent the ability to lessen the impact of a potential physical wound to the point of avoidance. Vitality could represent one or more of the following examples: strenuous parry, tiring dodge, impactful block, lost footing, damaged gear, cut or rip in clothing, bumps, bruises, loss of attention, becoming distracted, loss of composure, becoming frazzled, becoming sweaty, or getting dirty.
• Wound points are the second half of a character's hit points (round down). Taking wound point damage represents an actual wound. To taking wound point damage is to become bloodied.

Hit Points and Bloodied Damage

• Bloodied is a keyword to describe someone who has taken sufficient damage to dip into the second half of a character's hit points (wound points) and represents a serious wound. Under most circumstances becoming bloodied is quite apparent.

Hit Points and Healing Wound Point (Bloodied) Damage

• Magical healing will heal wound points (bloodied hit points) damage.
• Wound points (bloodied damage) are not healed during a short or long rest.
• Access to magical healing is profoundly useful and coveted.
• A number of Wound Points hit point damage may be healed with a week's rest. The base is the maximum total characters Wound Points. Quarter the amount will be healed without a doctor (possible infection save DC 15). Half the amount will be healed with an unsuccessful medicine roll (possible infection save DC 10). The entire amount will be healed with a successful medicine roll. The medicine DC for a week’s rest is DC 15 - Constitution score of the patient.

Will play fine maybe even great but there is very little meaning behind the system. If your fighter has more of whatever represents "meat" than a horse then something is off. This system would guarantee he does.

 

[darkrose50]

Will play fine maybe even great but there is very little meaning behind the system. If your fighter has more of whatever represents "meat" than a horse then something is off. This system would guarantee he does.

This would be the Conan level of ability to withstand pain and punishment. It would be supernatural, heroic, or story pain, blood and suffering. It would mean that the character was visibly battered, bruised, and bleeding. I would use this system (I plan on testing it soon-ish) to trigger other effects . . . like sharks smelling the blood, or impressing the princess/prince with how one could stay clean-ish and unwounded defending them, making the characters actions more-or-less look effortless compared to the surrounding carnage. My system above would also elevate the power and prestige of healing magic (often separating the have, from the have-nots . . . I plan on healing casters to be rare, and healing potions to be out of the reach of the poor). This, I hope, would add drama.

 

[FrogReaver]

This would be the Conan level of ability to withstand pain and punishment. It would be supernatural, heroic, or story pain, blood and suffering. It would mean that the character was visibly battered, bruised, and bleeding. I would use this system (I plan on testing it soon-ish) to trigger other effects . . . like sharks smelling the blood, or impressing the princess/prince with how one could stay clean-ish and unwounded defending them, making the characters actions more-or-less look effortless compared to the surrounding carnage. My system above would also elevate the power and prestige of healing magic (often separating the have, from the have-nots . . . I plan on healing casters to be rare, and healing potions to be out of the reach of the poor). This, I hope, would add drama.

Ah I see. Well if your goal is for your heroes to have much more "meat" than horses and for their meat to somehow magically increase each level then I think you have arrived!