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HP represent an interesting resource management challenge. There are two main groups of  thought regarding HP. One thinks that HP should be a "daily" resource that is drained over the course of many fights. The other thinks HP should be an "encounter" resource that start at or near full for every fight.

If HP are supposed to be a resource that is slowly depleted over the course of a day no single fight can be threatening. In this set up no player can be expected to take more than 25% of their max HP in a given fight or the group will never make it past 4 fights per day. This was the case more or less in pre 4e D&D (ignoring wands of cure light that turned HP into an encounter resource here). To make fights deadly the game either had to be played at low levels where HP is low and damage can 1 shot you or random SoD effects had to be added into the encounters. If fights drained too much of the party's healing resources (Max HP, potions, spells, etc) the group would have to stop and rest. This sometimes created the necessity to bring along a healbot in order to maintain proper adventure pacing. In this method monster HP must be very high and damage must be very low when compared to the PCs.

In 4e there was a shift to encounter based healing. This meant the party entered every fight at or near full fighting capacity. Because of this fights felt very binary to some. Either the players will win or the players will lose. To make fights deadly each hit an enemy dealt would do about 25-35% of a players max HP. SoD effects were rare because they were no longer needed to make fights deadly. Adventure pacing was maintained because a group could usually go for 5+ encounters before being depleted of healing surges. Parties also were more willing to challenge themselves because they started every combat at full HP. In this method monster HP and Damage can be roughly equal to the values of the PCs.

Now both methods definitely have their advantages and disadvantages. What method would you prefer to see in D&D next and why?

that's the reason why i like the surge mechanics or wounds systems.
you have encounter hp, and daily hp as well.

4e took it a bit too far, but in 3e it was even more an encounter ressource as wands of lesser vigor were like your daily morning coffee.

Tiredness, shield of karma or vitality?

In the past I thought it was the third, but when the hitpoints can be healed by no magic powers (4th Edition) now I´m not so sure. I can´t imagine a character who has lost lots of blood and almost die can be as fresh as a daisy with only a day of rest.

* I don´t know if we will some module about aggravated damage and undead powers of draining life.

If aggavated damage is a special type that it isn´t so easy to be healed, the gameplay could be too different. 

 

I like hit points as an encounter resource. Hit points are just so important that if they're supposed to deplete, PCs are going to pretty much use every means necessary to get more.

Jul 9, 2012 -- 1:18PM, Saelorn wrote:

I've always been a fan of HP as an adventure-based resource.  If you get injured by a stray arrow on day one, then maybe you won't be up to full when you come across that band of orcs on day three.  Sure, magical healing can help, but it's not going to be able to get everyone up to full all of the time.

The benefit of this model is that no single fight is going to be super lethal.  A fight where everyone loses a third of their HP is bordering on Pyrrhic victory.  If everyone gets injured, you might have to hole up in a cave for a few days while you recover, but you'll know going into a fight if you should probably run rather than try to swing it out.

You could also go into the den of evil, or the tower of ominousness, and know that doing it all in one go wouldn't be that much harder than if you spread out your incursions over the course of a week - it might even be easier, since they won't have so much warning that you'll be coming.

Well, my only comment on this is that D&D has never been this game out of the box.  Clerics and other classes can heal too much for this to work.  I guess it was a bit more like this in 1st and 2nd edition, but only a bit, imho.

I'd rather go with a Surge system like 4th Edition, but with fewer surges -- perhaps 4 per person.  I don't see why each class would have different numbers when the hit points already make a big difference.  In combat, I'd lean towards Surge effects only working if you are up and able.  Once you go down, you are unconscious for the rest of the fight.  However, at any point during this time you can take an Injury and go to 0 + Surge Value hit points -- this doesn't cost a surge.  You can even take an injury to stay up upon sustaining a blow that would down you.  An injury would give you a -1 penalty to AC and all d20 rolls, stacking with any other injuries you have.  To remove the latest injury, you have to rest for a number of days equal to the total number of injuries you have.

Of course, there'd be a limit to the number of injuries you can have at once...somewhere between 3 and 5 seems to be about right.  As long as you can take an injury, you can't bleed to death, but you can suffer a coup de grace and die if you don't get up.

Obviously that's just a sketch of a system, but if you want something where people can take a while to heal, I think a system like this will work better than trying to adjust the healing in the game.  It even works without healing surges (I just like surges as they make more sense).  There are lots of ways to modify the above system too, such as making different sorts of injuries that you can pick from with the possibility that further injuries are more serious.

It has the nice side effect of making it so that running away is more of an option.  Injuries would be bad enough that you'd want to avoid them, but if you decide to run away late then you can still get away..you just suffer some longer-lasting damage.  I think it avoids the death spiral by generating HP when used and it is something a player opts into.