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I have seen many people complaing about how there are no penalties for injuries. Many people don't like the fact that a Fighter with 1 HP can run, jump, climb and fight just as well as someone who has 100 HP. Some people have suggested a wound or injury system, but that is a relatively big change from the established system and tracking multiple wounds is very cumbersome and slows things down too much. The bloodied mechanic might be the solution for this. Bloodied is either on or off and requires very little tracking. There could be an optional/variant/module rule that had the bloodied condition and gave some sort of penalties.

Now I do not want to make this about HP abstraction, so please do not turn it into that.

I myself was a big fan of the bloodied mechanic from 4E. More specifally, I like that some abilities were affected by whether or not someone was bloodied. (e.g. Dragonborn got +1 attack while bloodied, Tieflings got +1 attack against bloodied, some Barbarians got a boon when their attack bloodied a target). The bloodied condition allowed for a lot of unique and interesting effects.

My biggest problem with the bloodied condition was that it happened at exactly half HP, so characters often tracked damage to determine an enemies remaining HP. This is a pretty bad case of metagaming and if bloodied was brought back this would need to be fixed.

So I ask you this.
Should they bring the bloodied conditioned back?
How should bloodied be determined (fraction of HP, HP range, roll to see if bloodied, etc.)?
Should there be an optional rule that gives bloodied characters a penalty?

Give any additional ideas you have about the bloodied condition and how to make it better.

Yes, I definitely want a “bloodied” condition.

The “fresh” condition, the upper half of the hit points, means the hero is successfully avoiding serious injuries, with only minor scrapes and bruises - by means of energy, skill, alertness, quick moves, reliable armor, magic, and so on.

However the “bloodied” condition, the lower half of the hit points, means the stamina, focus, and luck are wearing out. The incoming attacks are fully connecting and the injuries are becoming deeper and more serious.

(You can observe this dynamic in fight sports. Even when the sport does everything possible to prevent serious injuries, the fighters reach a point wear it is difficult to avoid attacks.)

So, if the hero can stay “fresh”, then it is easy to recover from these superficial cuts and bruises, while bandaging up during the 5-to-15 minute rest afterward. Even when the hero completely recovers, back to maximum hit points, the hero still has scrapes and bruises, but can completely ignore them and carry on.

However, when the hero gets “bloodied”, the injuries are deeper. These hit points require deeper healing. And without magic, real rest.

If the hero reaches zero hit points, then the hero enters into the condition of “shock”. A serious injury has happened, and the hero is going into shock, including the possibility of losing consciousness, and suffering longterm injury, even dying, God forbid.

• If the hero reaches zero and has suffered a serious injury, then there is a chance (possibly a Constitution save), that the injury is debilitating. Such as twisting an ankle, breaking a rib, or worse.
• If the injury incapacitates the hero, there is an additional chance that the injury is permanent, such as paralysis, loss of a limb, or so on.
• If the hero suffers permanent loss, then there is a chance of actually dying, God forbid.




With above model in mind, it seems possible to make the D&D mechanics correspond closely to actual medical research for how to measure injuries and how to determine the prognosis for the requirements to heal.

For example:

1st degree burn = fresh (superficial injuries)
2nd degree burn = bloodied (somewhat deeper injuries)
3rd degree burn, possibly = while in shock (possibly loses use of burned area temporarily)
4th degree burn, possibly = while in shock (possibly loses use of the burned area permanently)

Or similarly (albeit harsher in some models):

Light/mild/minor injuries = fresh (superficial injuries)
Moderate injuries = bloodied
Serious injuries = while in shock
Critical injuries = while in shock 

There are other medical models along these lines that reallife hospitals use to evaluate victims of physical trauma, and to predict their recovery. These kinds of models can inform the concept of hit points, or possibly correspond precisely.

Absolutely not.  I am of the opinion, in every question, that more math = bad.  Anything which requires tracking overhead, which players might forget during the heat of combat, only to remember later and then feel it invalidates the entire encounter, is a design mistake.
At absolute most, I could understand a condition which hinges on being initially wounded ("the WereRat changes to its true form if attacked..."), but not one which forces DMs and players to mechanically track, hit point by hit point, when certain combat abilities or conditions will kick in.  It breaks immersion, ruins pacing, and adds headache.