User:Spazalicious Chaos/Wounds and Armor Reconsidered (3.5e Variant Rule)

Author: Spazalicious Chaos (talk) Date Created: Feb 23, 2011 Status: finished, structuring would be helpful Editing: Clarity edits only please

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Wounds and Armor: Reconsidered

Hit points and Armor Class do not make sense as written. They can't. It should not matter how many dragons you have slain or how many princesses you rescue when factoring in, say, a meteor landing on top of your character, or a knife in your kidney. There needs to be a balancing act at work here. On one end, humans are remarkably difficult to kill quickly, and only absolute newbs to combat can get knocked out. But on the other, an ecosystem where the difference between killing a human-like organism can range from one punch to a nuclear explosion would collapse day one. And once you factor in AC... yeah, it falls apart fast.

These are the goals of this rewrite to HP and AC:

• Low-level combats end in unconsciousness, not death.
• All creatures are consistent in regards to killing, but not necessarily in fighting.
• A definite difference between miss, hit, and critical hit.

Hit Points and Wound Points

Visualizing Wounds

The more Wound Points you have, the more truly damage-resistant your body is. Hit Points are easy - you either bruise easily and go down like a gimp, or you can fight past your physical limits. Wound Points, by contrast, are actual damage. To visualize how they work, imagine your character's body divided into segments, each segment being equal to one wound point. The average human would be divided into twenty segments, and one wound would be about equivalent to the destruction of a foot or hand. If a longsword deals 2 wounds to a normal human and impacts on the torso, it breaks through the ribs and possibly cuts into a lung. But a dwarf would not be as damaged. The average dwarf has 24 WP and thus is divided into 24 segments. The same sword strike that cut into a human lung would only crack the ribs of a dwarf. On the other end, an elf averages at 16 WP, thus that wound would slice through the ribs and cleave the lung in two. How does this help anything? It acts as a reasonable guide for how wounded a target would be after _ happens. A wolf bit off a hand? Deals one wound to a normal human. Tree falls on the same human's legs and pelvis? Probably closer to 8 wounds. Acid bath? Anywhere from 10 to 20 wounds. Thus, using wounds intelligently can aid in description, but also help in determining on the fly combat effects that would normally be impossible.

This variant requires you to keep track of two sets of health scores: Hit Points and Wound Points.

• Your Hit Points are determined in exactly the same way as they are in the Players Handbook. Hit Points represent how much endurance your character has as well as how much shock your body can take from a non-damaging impact, ie a hit that does mere cosmetic damage to the body. Loss of hit points result in bruises, small shallow cuts, and fatigue. A creature with less than 50% HP is fatigued, and becomes exhausted at 25% HP. Recovery of these hit points removes these conditions. A creature that accumulates these conditions via physical exertion receives an appropriate loss in hit points. If the condition is inflicted artificially, such as via a spell, there is no loss in hit points. If you fall to zero hit points, you are unconscious for a number of minutes equal to the damage taken in excess of your hit points, or for 5 rounds if you fell perfectly at zero.
• Your Wound Points are equal to double your Constitution score if you are small, medium, or large, your Constitution if you're tiny, half if you're diminutive, 1 if you're fine, quadruple your Constitution if you're huge, eight times your Constitution score if you are gargantuan, and sixteen times your score if you are colossal. And all for a very specific reason: Wounds are physical damage. These are broken bones, severed muscles, punctured lungs, and bleeding arteries. Wounds are only targeted about 5% of the time in a typical combat, but suck when they are lost. Every time you lose wound points, you are dazed for a number of rounds equal to the damage you took. If you lose more than 25% of your wound points in one hit, you are instead stunned.

Special- Creatures who lack Constitution scores are treated as having Wound points equal to their hit die x 10. Thus, a human skeleton would have 10 WP. Each hit automatically results in wounds as per a critical (see below), but the creature never suffers penalties for such injuries and does not suffer blood loss damage.

Optional- If you really want to play up the endurance aspect of hit points, have players pay a "combat fee" of one hit point for every turn in which they use a full round, standard, or two move actions. While it is possible to have characters fight themselves to unconsciousness, keep in mind that the leading causes of death in combat used to be heat stroke and drowning in the mud that came from the blood being spilled. Hell, if you really want magic to be an endurance test, have it deal spell level-d-something to the caster. Again, if hit points are a measure of staying power and stamina, then strenuous activities should result in hit point loss.

Wounds and Hit Points in Combat

While not many, this health system results in some changes to combat:

• Armor Class: Armor class is the touch zone. Attacks that fail to meet AC miss. If the attack fails to meet touch AC, it misses completely and will threaten objects and creatures adjacent to the target (for melee strikes) or behind the target (for ranged attacks.) Attacks that fail to exceed full AC graze the armor of the target, and are redirected to an adjacent space, determined as per a missed splash weapon. Only one such deflection or threatening should occur per attack, and should only factor in if there is something worth threatening, such as a nearby object or character in harm's way. In these cases, subtract 10 from the original attack roll and count the threatened target as flat-footed. If the new result would hit the threatened target, it deals damage as if it was the original recipient. Otherwise, the attack is a total miss and passes through empty air.
• Hit Point Damage: Most attacks that the target is aware of deal damage to hit points and equipment. If a attack connects and it is not a critical, it deals its damage to both hit points and armor or equipment. This represents an impact that is absorbed by the body, resulting in some shock but little physical damage. The damage to armor and equipment represents where the force of the blow actually ends up. As an optional rule, the GM may allow a player to sacrifice equipment to absorb some of the damage by blocking with it. The character must be aware of the attack and must be able to bring the item to bear in time to meet the attack. Thus, it must be in hand or else the character must have a free hand and the Quick Draw feat. The item reduces the damage the character takes by its hardness and prevents damage to armor or worn equipment, but also takes the damage in total to determine if it has been damaged or destroyed.
• Subdual Damage: If an attack deals subdual damage, it cannot deal wound damage except on a coup de grace. Hit point damage from subdual attacks does not damage to armor or blocking items, but still deals damage to hit points on a hit. On a critical threat, it merely deals its multiplied damage with no wound damage, thus there is never a need to confirm a subdual critical.
• Wound Damage: On a critical hit, the target takes Wound damage. First, regardless of whether the damage is confirmed or not, the target hit takes the multiplied damage to hit hit points. The armor is not harmed, for it is bypassed completely on a critical, and it may not be blocked as described above. If the critical is confirmed, then the target also takes wounds equal to the number of damage dice in the attack times its critical multiplier. For example, a greatsword would deal 6 points of wound damage on a critical. If a wound is taken, the creature suffers blood loss and may bleed to death, losing one additional wound point per hit taken each minute.
• Constitution Damage, Size Change, and Wounds: Once initial Wound Points are generated, they are a separate entity from the Constitution score. Constitution gained or lost has no effect on total or current Wounds Points. Such loss or gain is rather a reflection of the immune system; loss in Constitution represents failing health and reduced ability to fight off disease and toxins, while increases raise the stamina and infection tolerance of the character. The only exception is if the ability increase gained every fourth level is used to improve Constitution, at which point it also raises the maximum Wound Points by the appropriate multiplier. If size increases or decreases to a point where the creature would lose or gain Wound Points, such increases or losses are treated like temporary hit points, but can only be used to prevent Wound damage.
• Damage and Surprise: If a creature is flat-footed, it automatically takes damage as if for a critical. For helpless targets, the same is true, with the exception of the coup de grace. A coup de grace simply allows the attacker to deal full weapon damage as wound damage. While ability modifiers are added to this damage, extraneous damage, such as the flaming quality or sneak attack, are not added in their totality, but rather as an additional +1 damage per die. For example, a first level rogue with a flaming dagger +1 and average strength would deal 1d4+2 damage per coup de grace attack (+1 dagger weapon damage plus 1 for 1d6 sneak attack.) A coup de grace can also allow a subdual damage attack to deal wound damage, which allows it to deal its critical multiplier as wound damage per hit.
• Environmental Damage: At the GM's discretion, there may be some environmental effects that automatically deal one point of wound damage per die of hit point damage. Examples may include falling and falling objects, immersion in lava or acid, being on fire, and others as logic and table consent requires.
• Damage Reduction and Energy Resistance: Rather than having such damage reduce the total when it comes to wound points, try having the resistance act as a damage divider. Simply divide the damage taken by the amount listed before applying it to wounds, rounding down. This is especially important for dealing with creatures with no constitution score. However, if this is the route you wish to take, it is recommended you raise all damage reduction and energy resistance that is below five by one point, because in this variant DR or ER 1 is quite literally nothing of value.

Wounds and Hit Points in Healing

The rules to healing are also different:

• Healing Hit Points: Most of this follows the healing rules and abilities in standard D&D, with the addition of Hit Point can only be regained by resting, which allows anything capable of healing through natural processes to roll one hit die+Constitution each day as it wakes up from rest, gaining the result in Hit Points restored.
• Healing Wounds: All Wounds require the application of the heal skill each day, or else the victim must makes saves against disease. Treated Wounds heal at the rate of 1 per week on a DC 10 Constitution check, or one per month is untreated and a DC 15 Constitution check is made. The cure and vigor series of spells are useless when it comes to healing Wounds. Any spell or effect that restores ability damage or drain heals an equal number of Wounds. The Heal spell likewise recovers all lost Wound Points.

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