Removing Hit Points from the Game

[Garthanos]

Saving Throws could work well and require little book keeping but they do not feel heroic.
(its a tad too realistic as human response to injury is highly fluxy)

Said saving throws do not measure fatigue though where hitpoints might be seen as doing so
vaguely but since there is no ability impairment from hitpoing loss never mind .

 

[Tony Vargas]

Hps are perhaps D&D's most successful sub-system, modeling a very tricky, inconsistent, yet utterly critical genre bit - "plot armor" - in a mechanically simple, if conceptually unintuitive (and even untenable, if you over think it) way.

In every ed, hp have remained fundamentally unchanged, because they do work, and, in 5e, hp/damage is perhaps the most significant way in which all PCs and monsters scale with level.

Not the only way: BA is minor by comparison, but not insignificant, and spell progressions represent a profound 'scaling' of versatility even if spell damage weren't scaling with slot.

But doing away with hp/damage scaling would all but eliminate the meaning of CR for many monsters, and all but eliminate advancement for a few unfortunate sub-classes.

 

[5ekyu]

So what happens if they fail the check? I am not familiar with Mutants and Masterminds.

As for the discrepancy between classes and HD type, you could add a bonus to the check. Also, if you make it a CON ability check instead of a save, it removes the advantage to classes with CON saves or desire for the Resilient (CON) feat.

Mutants and Masterminds has a damage save system.

Each successful attack requires a "damage save" (think ConSave) vs a DC created by the strength of the atrack.

Failure produces a variety of effects depending on how badly you fail. Degree of success and fail us big.

Succeed - shrug it off
Fail by 1 to 5 - bruised and battered - take cumulative -1 to damage saves until healed. (Think of this as losing hp)
Fail by 6-10 - bruised and get a one turn condition called dazed which is kinda like slowed - limits your actions but doesnt lose all of them
Fail by 11-15 - stunned for one turn
Fail by 16+ - staggered - stunned ongoing - lasting - two staggered equal out

EDIT To give you idea of odds, iirc at beginning of fight if an attack of +10 hits a target with tough +10 its odds are about 25%each of shrug it off, take a bruise, dazed and stunned. So the more severe effects come into play after bruises or when more potent effects hit. END EDIT

These may not be exact but illustrate the idea. Essentially instead of tracking hp up and fow, you use brief conditions as the effect of intermediate combat hits. These produce sudden opportunities and moments of drama- while bruises account for the gradual raising of risk.

Now, the system needs a variety of exploit type options to help add to the drama - like say power attack raising the damage threat of an attack that you can use say against someone stunned. If you had enough of these, conditional, you might even be able to get rid of bruised tracking - or let bruises just extend or exacerbate an existing condition - not just accumulate to penalize saves.

For other genres you could have a wider variety of conditions applied, gradual recovery instead of one round, etc.

All in all, when I used it in supers, scifi and fantasy, I pt produced some of the most dynamic and lively combats of most any rpg system and it scales well and is easily adaptable to produce many different flavors.

This could be added in a lighter touch on top of a hp system, but I have not done so.

I first used it in brief homebrew- I took it in concept from a similar kind of damage tracking used in a tank miniatures game.

 

[Arnwolf666]

Implement the toughness save from true20 and mutants and masterminds and see if that works for you

 

[Fenris-77]

If you want to you use saves my personal preference would be to hack the combat system to make combat more a matter of opposed rolls and with ability to soak damage with armour/CON or avoid it with Dex. Toss in some additional choices for actions, bonus actions and reactions to make things feel more interactive and "duel-ly" and you might have something workable. That doesn't fix the hit point scale any, but if you math out the combat damage and scale it by level you could probably make it work.

Just as a thought, if characters could soak the AC benefit of armour plus either their Dex or Con mod (so something between 3/4 and 10/12 for most characters) you have a base for a system where not every hit actually does damage, or does less actual damage, and you can scale back the actual hit points. As characters get higher level they do more damage, but they also have additional and greater ways and means of avoiding or limiting damage.