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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Herremann the Wise" data-source="post: 5714441" data-attributes="member: 11300">Too true.There is an important difference here whether you allow negatives or not. If you don't then hit points have to take on more of the "physical damage" load where as if you have negatives, then you have a little more flexibility both mechanically and narratively speaking.Let's take the most extreme case, 1hp left and he take the 1hp rat bite and dies. At 1hp, mechanically this guy can die to any sort of damage. As such, his condition is most likely one where his state is incredibly poor with his heart on the verge of arrest. As he rests against a wall, beaten bloody, sweating and with his heart palpitating, a rat sensing a fine meal bites deep into his ankle, the extreme pain instantly rips throughout his body causing his heart to rapidly spasm before finally arresting. His allies would never know that it was a hungry long-scurried-off rat that actually killed him.And then afterword, the rat in it's adventure sees an anemic sleeping wizard, bites his ankle for 1hp of extreme pain and gets magic missiled for his trouble.I think that description is fair, wouldn't you say?I think it is also very fair to say that all editions have had significant issues with damage and healing and the complete lack of clarity the mechanics provide. I think what would be interesting is getting all the obviously intelligent and imaginative people on this thread together to create a damage/healing system that uses hit points (that is one D&D sacred cow that should never be killed) and makes sense to all of us here. It would be nice to see that such a thing is possible. Now there's a new challenge. <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=":)" />Best RegardsHerremann the Wise</blockquote>

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