what if, in lieu of HP we used Mistake Points ?

[le Redoutable]

Animals are quite easy to defeat, just one critical hit and they are done;
is this kinda some sort of Fate, or Mistake points ( like in looking to the past , when they failed but escaped luckily )

then, Fighters may have had lots of wounds suffered from old battles...

does this mean something to you ( sorry my poor english can't help here )

( have a nice day )

 

[aramis erak]

It makes sense linguistically... (for once, I actually think I grasp what you're asking).

«Mistake Points» has connotations for me that tend towards minor criminal actions punished by point accumulation - Drivers licenses, especially.

I think your example case - "one critical hit" - is more fantasy than reality. I know a number of hunting guides. The "one shot drops" on big game (caribou, moose, small bears) is what they cheer about; it's abnormal, and the usual is 0.5 to 3 km of hiking to find where the target dropped from exsanguination.

A friend took a kodiak grizzly with a hunting bow (120# draw @ 28", 35" draw length, triblade hollow-mount arrows, hollow aluminum shaft, hollow-mount knock) did get a one shot kill. (There was footage.) He hit the aorta, and it bled out in about 150m of panicked flight. He had to wait 10 min before it was no longer dangerous to approach. That's an almost perfect shot If he'd just hit the lung? or gone through the aorta? he'd have been hiking a couple km.

Likewise, comparing firearms data - most one-shot kills are not one-shot-stops. That is, killing the human with the first bullet is more common that causing them immobility with the first shot.

By changing the name, you're not changing Gygax & Arneson's intent, nor my complaints about it. The "one shot stop" is not quite a myth, but it's very much a rarity, more so than a "nat 20 crit"...