Post by thegreyelf on Sept 29, 2021 17:08:11 GMT -6
This is really just spitballing and I have no illusions that most of the posters here will dismiss this idea out of hand as being unnecessary or overcomplicated. That being said....
So most of us have accepted that hit points don't mean "wounds," and that they are an abstract representation of your character's general combat ability. Losing hit points represents becoming generally less effective in combat and having less to do. I've thought about this more and more recently and I'm 150% sure it's probably been done a thousand times before, but what about implementing a wound level concept that mechanically represents this loss of efficacy?
Wound levels would have to be equal among all characters--that is, everyone has, say, 5 wound levels. You determine wound levels by dividing your total hit points by 5.
For every wound level increment you take in "damage," you suffer a penalty. Choose between -1 to hit, -1 to damage, or +1 to AC (AC cannot go above 9). Penalties remain until you heal damage, and disappear at the same rate (and in the same order) that they appeared.
Let's say, for example, a character has 15 hit points. This means every 3 hit points of damage they suffer is one wound level.
They suffer 9 points of damage and now have 3 wound levels. For the first wound level, they take -1 to hit. For the second, they take -1 to damage, and for the third, they suffer +1 to AC (the player opts to spread it around). Later, a cleric heals the character for 6 points of damage. Last in, first out: the player regains their AC and damage losses. They're still down 1 to hit, which will be restored when they reach full hit points.
Again, just a spitball. Might be fun to toy with.
I originally thought that maybe you would have wound levels equal to your character level--divide hit points by character level. But that would overly penalize higher level characters. Leaving wound levels standardized solves that issue.
So most of us have accepted that hit points don't mean "wounds," and that they are an abstract representation of your character's general combat ability. Losing hit points represents becoming generally less effective in combat and having less to do. I've thought about this more and more recently and I'm 150% sure it's probably been done a thousand times before, but what about implementing a wound level concept that mechanically represents this loss of efficacy?
Wound levels would have to be equal among all characters--that is, everyone has, say, 5 wound levels. You determine wound levels by dividing your total hit points by 5.
For every wound level increment you take in "damage," you suffer a penalty. Choose between -1 to hit, -1 to damage, or +1 to AC (AC cannot go above 9). Penalties remain until you heal damage, and disappear at the same rate (and in the same order) that they appeared.
Let's say, for example, a character has 15 hit points. This means every 3 hit points of damage they suffer is one wound level.
They suffer 9 points of damage and now have 3 wound levels. For the first wound level, they take -1 to hit. For the second, they take -1 to damage, and for the third, they suffer +1 to AC (the player opts to spread it around). Later, a cleric heals the character for 6 points of damage. Last in, first out: the player regains their AC and damage losses. They're still down 1 to hit, which will be restored when they reach full hit points.
Again, just a spitball. Might be fun to toy with.
I originally thought that maybe you would have wound levels equal to your character level--divide hit points by character level. But that would overly penalize higher level characters. Leaving wound levels standardized solves that issue.
