D&D 5E The "everyone at full fighting ability at 1 hp" conundrum

[3catcircus]

If I follow this correctly, a battle against a dragon would play out as follows:

1. The mage hits the dragon with a level 1 magic missile, increasing its injury level to "slight" and giving it -1 to most checks.
2. The cleric uses a cantrip, dealing ~3 damage, which increases the dragon's wound level to "moderate" and gives it -2 to most checks.
3. The rest of the party attacks, firing any number of arrows and swinging their swords repeatedly; and they're just fishing for crits, because any attack that does less than 25 damage is going to be ignored.
4. The dragon definitely kills the entire party, because it's literally invincible at this stage of the fight.
   1. Unless there's a rogue in the party, of course. Sneak attack bypasses invincibility, and the dragon will die in two more hits from the rogue, which are the only hits that matter.

Maybe I'm missing something, but there's a reason why 5E went with scaling HP rather than scaling AC. When you make an attack, and it has literally zero effect, then the game feels boring. Not that I entirely disagree with you, and I definitely think they could have used a hybrid approach in order to better limit HP inflation, but the system you describe does not sound like much fun at the table.

The only thing you are missing is that the rogue also couldn't kill the dragon that easily - highly likely the only result (and the only result that deserves to happen from a 1st level party attacking an ancient red dragon) is a TPK. Invincibility?? A 1st level rogue doing a sneak attack is gonna only do an additional 1d6 damage. Assuming a crit on a sneak attack using a short sword, one could assume a Max of 24 plus STR or DEX - assume DEX 18 and it is a Max of 28 points. That would do a moderate wound which, combined with the existing moderate wound would put the dragon into a serious wound. A 2nd crit sneak attack would only do 28 points max - you'd need to do a minimum of 38 damage to inflict a 2nd serious wound to result in a critical wound. You could end up with a dragon that fails multiple CON checks from moderate or serious wounds leading to shock and eventually instability, but with a CON of 29, it's extremely unlikely unless the DM fumbles the roll.

 

[3catcircus]

What it also unfortunately shuts down is the "death by a thousand cuts" trope.

But there is a fix: after taking two slight wounds to make a moderate, two* more then represent another moderate, which then combines with the first moderate to make a serious. Lather rinse repeat, such that any creature can eventually be killed by application of enough slight wounds. This would, however, be a nuisance to track; particularly when you're running a bunch of foes and even more so if you want to vary how many 'slights' are required to add another injury layer as the creature's condition gets worse.

* - or whatever other number makes sense - could be three, for example, except for the first set of two.

You could do this, but the idea of a bunch of flesh wounds leading to death might be too much of a death spiral.

If consider a slight wound something that opens up your flesh (like slicing open your hand on a broken bottle), causes an ankle sprain, a large contusion to your ribs, a black eye, etc. Six small slashes to the thigh like an emo cutter girl doesn't really provide the visual, nor does it seem like it would actually add up to more than a moderate wound.

Moderate wounds? Maybe a severed ligament, a closed break of a bone, etc.

Serious = significant blood loss, organ damage, open fractures, loss of an eye.

Critical = CNS trauma, severed limbs, skull fracture with brain damage.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

The only thing you are missing is that the rogue also couldn't kill the dragon that easily - highly likely the only result (and the only result that deserves to happen from a 1st level party attacking an ancient red dragon) is a TPK. Invincibility?? A 1st level rogue doing a sneak attack is gonna only do an additional 1d6 damage.

I was assuming the party was closer to level 9. In any case, it does a good job of highlighting the disparity between classes that can hit hard (like the wizard, rogue, and paladin) vs the classes that can hit more often (such as the fighter, ranger, and monk); in that the latter are incapable of contributing under this model.

Remember, the damage from a weapon attack does not scale at all with level. Only sneak attack and spell slots have scaling damage. It doesn't matter if you're a level 20 fighter, making 4-8 attacks in a round, because each hit still does exactly as much as it was doing at level 1.

Of course, if you did have a weapon that was theoretically capable of killing a dragon, then it would be dead in two hits. It's either invincible, or trivial, with nothing in between.

 

[RangerWickett]

On a quick read, this says you flat out can't kill anyone without scoring at least one "bleed" critical. Intentional?

There's also no provision anywhere for going unconscious without dying. Also intentional?

And my inner edit-against-rules-lawyers instinct pulled this: reading it strictly as written, this also means death from hit point damage caused by your environment e.g. lava or freezing or falling becomes impossible: because the environment doesn't roll to hit it therefore can't critical on you, and when you run out of hit points otherwise you're still (according to clause I.) conscious but helpless (and can crawl 5' per round) - the only way you can die here is via a "bleed" critical.

Haha, great feedback. It's something I'm tinkering with for a custom mishmash of PF2, 5E, and L5R, so I hadn't considered lava.

I prefer a game where PC deaths are rare. I was going to make it where once you're at 0 HP, more damage does nothing; it's just cruelty. You have to go over and coup someone if you want them to die fast.

Fall off a cliff? Get set on fire? Those should probably inflict damage plus serious wounds. Being frozen would cause exhaustion which eventually kills you (and kills you faster if you have a chest wound).

But yeah, if you fall in lava you die, no save. The game should rarely have such situations, though.

One thing I didn't include in my post was Resolve, a pool of 3 points per day that you can use to ignore the effects of a negative condition for a round. Fail a save against Hold Person? Use a point of resolve and fight free of it for a moment. Get knocked to 0 HP, spend a point of resolve to be able to keep fighting just a bit longer. Or spend a point of resolve to narratively describe how something doesn't kill you. You fall off a ledge toward lava, but you spend resolve, so there happens to be a protruding rock that you land on. You fall unconscious and get a serious wound or two, but you'll live.

If the villain is able to shove you off the rock, though, well, you die.

 

[RangerWickett]

As an exercise in brainstorming I'd like to throw out these ideas.

2) Critical hits do 2x dice damage, but one of the dice is maximized, and also impose +1 point of exhaustion.

Critical hits that reduce a creature to 0 hit points or critical hits on creatures that already have zero hit points result in rolling on the lingering injuries table DMG p 272.

Rolling a death save results in +1 point of exhaustion.

I think if crits inflict debilitating wounds, they shouldn't also do extra damage. It's more interesting to have to keep fighting with a small disadvantage, and if you deal more damage, the fight ends faster, which means less time with the PC on the back foot.

I'm hesitant to impose exhaustion levels too often (and crits happen fairly often), because a) they lead to a death spiral where you have a character who can't really do anything, and b) the game has no way to get rid of them except just resting.

You can't spend a limited resource to negate them; you basically just have to stop adventuring for a day. I prefer dilemmas where you pick whether things get worse in one way or another, hence how I have chest wounds rack up exhaustion until you choose to take a breather for a round.

 

[Lanefan]

I think if crits inflict debilitating wounds, they shouldn't also do extra damage. It's more interesting to have to keep fighting with a small disadvantage, and if you deal more damage, the fight ends faster, which means less time with the PC on the back foot.

I'm hesitant to impose exhaustion levels too often (and crits happen fairly often), because a) they lead to a death spiral where you have a character who can't really do anything, and b) the game has no way to get rid of them except just resting.

You can't spend a limited resource to negate them; you basically just have to stop adventuring for a day. I prefer dilemmas where you pick whether things get worse in one way or another, hence how I have chest wounds rack up exhaustion until you choose to take a breather for a round.

FYI you've misquoted me - those aren't my words you're replying to with this one.

 

[RangerWickett]

2) Critical hits do 2x dice damage, but one of the dice is maximized, and also impose +1 point of exhaustion.

Critical hits that reduce a creature to 0 hit points or critical hits on creatures that already have zero hit points result in rolling on the lingering injuries table DMG p 272.

Rolling a death save results in +1 point of exhaustion.

Lanefan, weird glitch. I clicked to quote Snick's post, and it did quote them, but didn't attribute it correctly.

 

[DND_Reborn]

So, a lot of post since I was here last and unfortunately no time tonight to read them all, so this might be late to the party, but here is something I thought of today.

When people talk about the "meat" part of HP, that is the part that should be slow to recover. So, a simple way to determine how many Meat Points... ... your character has, how about this:

Your body/meat portion of your HP is equal to half your HP (round up) or your Constitution score, whichever is lower. This reflects that early on, much of your HP is your body and your physical ability to take a hit. As you get to higher levels, the amount of HP that is relatively your body meat is less and less.

This table shows how a Fighter might progress. As you can see, the MP/HP (meat points/hit points) shows that while initially half your hp, the meat portion counts for less and less as your skill, luck, sixth-sense, and favor/fate build up.

If you think of a longsword or any d8 weapon really, a person with CON 10 could take a couple hits before dying solely based on the CON = meat concept. A critical hit could take them out. Someone with max CON 20 could take 4-5 hits before dropping.

Now, how would the system for damage look? Well, any hit subtracts from you HP as normal. When your HP falls at or below the MP level (typically your CON as you see from the table), it is no longer just scratches and narrow misses, you are getting HURT!

A critical hit would deal normal damage, but the extra die roll would go right into the MP if you want to track it separately. If not, just do the RAW double dice.

Anyway, the main point I was thinking is in healing. Spending HD during short rests or taking a long rest restores you HP normally, BUT if you got down into the MP level, you need a long rest to recover one point each! Hey, it sucks, but physical injuries do take time to heal.

This is a starting point and hardly polished or thought out in much depth--- just an idea of how to do it while I was at work. Take it for what you can get out of it.

 

[Lanefan]

@dnd4vr - at first glance this idea has merit. A few thoughts and questions:

Do body (meat) points and fatigue (SLSF) points work the same when being cured by a spell? If yes, should they? If no, any specifics in mind?

I'll throw out there that your recovery-by-rest speed for body points is too slow. What about 1 point for the first long rest and 1 + Con mod. for each subsequent long rest?

Does this system unfairly penalize high-Con characters? For example, if two characters have 30 hit points each but one has Con 7 and the other Con 17, in typical adventuring the Con 17 person is much more often going to go into body points and thus need more time to recover than the Con 7 person; even though the Con 17 person should in theory recover faster.

To make it more reflective of the idea that everyone's bodies are more or less the same, and that those bodies don't intrinsically change as one advances in level, instead of using one's Con score as the basis I'd instead use a flat number determined by a die roll. As the average person's Con is about 11, that would want to be the average base score; but to determine your actual base number you'd roll 2d3+7. (though if you wanted to be really boring you could just set everyone to the same base number, but where's the fun in that?)

This Base Number would be locked in once rolled, and would never change again.

Then, proceed exactly as above except using the Base Number in place of the Con score.

Make sense?

 

[Garthanos]

Excepting that CON with its function as Stamina does not necessarily mean resisting meat damage it very much sounds like it could be resisting fatigue particularly when it increases by levels, which to my thinking invalidates huge amounts of the assumptions about meatitude making the percentages still smaller (to perhaps fully ambiguous amounts).

To my thinking dagger damage by normal strength human with nominal skill in a full meat attack means dead human (being a tough guy doesnt change what even half a foot of steel in your chest cavity can do.) ... so that is your absolute cap on meat points for most pcs.