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Aug 8, 2012 -- 1:27PM, Gurthaang wrote:

I'm on the opinion that HP are a mix of actual wounds+ skill/luck/etc. With this in mind, I propose the following sub-system to the already existing HP system in 5e (it can be a mini-module too):

Wounds: every time you suffer a critical hit (or some spell effect or an specific ability of a monster, or whatever) you receive 1 wound. Every wound imposes a penalty of -1 to attack rolls and ability checks (rolls with d20). This represents the distress caused by the wound in your body and reduces your overall efectiveness. Multiple wounds are cumulative.

You must spend one HD to remove a wound. Some Spells may allow you to remove a wound, or multiple wounds if the spell is powerful enough.

 I've written a Wounds Module myself, the main difference being that it focuses on reducing a character's maximum HP score (i.e., long term stamina) instead of inflicting a death spiral and that magic has no effect on Wounds, only hit points.  On the other hand, a hardcore version of my mod could include your death spiral for the duration of that encounter (i.e., until they get bandaged).

Aug 8, 2012 -- 10:18AM, MartianAlien wrote:

There is no argument. The D&D Next rules explain what Hit Points are -- an abstraction representing a combination of factors, where only when you have been reduced to 0 hp have you taken a direct strike (that's almost-but-not-quite a direct quote from the playtest packet). ......

Just for reference, Mike Mearls clearly spelled out exactly how hit points were supposed to work, prior to releasing the playtest. It differs slightly from the playtest document, which may represent a slight change of direction, or it may just represent a lack of clarity in the document.

Here's the article I'm referencing:

wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ll/2...

The relevent aspect is that a compromise is attempted. Hit points are mostly about things other than injury, but every strike does represent a tiny bit of injury. I would interpret the playtest documents mostly in light of that article, with the only fuzzy area being that it doesn't specify that any particular individual hit does some injury.

Are the final rules going to look like that? Based on the feedback, they have caught on that they're going to need modules to placate the extremes on either side.

Tony,

In the sense of having 2-3 potions for the party every 2 levels and maybe a single wand for the entire campaign if the party isn't fairing as well as usual.

Looking for a system that handles wounds and HP very interestingly, The revised edition of Star Wars D20 has one:
You get a number of wounds based on your Con score, and then gained Vitality the same way as HP in 3rd ed DnD.
Wounds represented your body's damage limits, whereas vitality was the effort you expended to turn a true hit into something that won't kill you - i.e. your ability to dodge at the last moment, or turn a strike so that it doesn't cut you in half, but it takes effort and stamina away from you. So, when an attack would "hit," it would be subtracted from your vitality until you had none left, at which point you could not turn away dangerous blows and subsequent damage was taken from your Wounds pool. The moment you lost 1 or more wounds, you became "wounded" and took penalties to pretty much everything. In addition, critical hits went directly to wounds instead of causing multiples of damage to hit points.

I think this system does a very good job of making things realistic, and they even had Jedi "casting" from vitality, representing the physical resources drawn on to use the force - which would work with the way many arcane casters are depicted.

I will say I was not as huge fan of the system as a) the whole cast-from-hp thing meant that force users had loads of vitality that would have to rival the soldier (fighter eq) in order to be able to use their abilities and b) it made critical hits the most important thing in the game, and favored many small attacks over fewer large ones; if you had 5 attacks that did 20 damage or 1 that did 100, that 20 was more likely to go to wounds, and once in wounds that would be more than enough to kill someone.

However, it is a very interesting system to look at from a versimilitude standpoint.

Aug 8, 2012 -- 1:03AM, Tony_Vargas wrote:

Additional healing is available as in-combat spells (or heal checks, or other class abilities) that take an action and heal 'dice' of damage - the size of the die is the same as your HD.

I prefer a more old school style, but I do think that quote provides an excellent way of scaling magical healing without offending old school sensibilities too much.