After much mild moping about hit points, I rediscovered Robert Fisher's old Classic D&D Injury Table, as well as Trollsmyth's revised version, which seems to me a productive way to begin thinking about injury, hit points, and balancing low-level survival with the simplicity of managing hit points as an abstract system. I think it was Roger the GS who noted that the best way to think of hit points is that only dropping below 1 hit point should be seen as an injury. I think that's probably a good idea if I want to keep the general set of D&D rules, warts and all.
Personally, I think I may just take Mr. Fisher's rules more or less whole cloth, but the rumination on the issue of hit points has been enlightening.
Personally, I think I may just take Mr. Fisher's rules more or less whole cloth, but the rumination on the issue of hit points has been enlightening.
I may have noted it (and will soon post my own take on it) but I can't take credit for the idea, the last implementation I saw was in Greg Christopher's Errant and I'm sure there are others.
ReplyDeleteIf I'm not mistaken, this system is similar to that used in Warhammer Roleplay.
ReplyDeleteIt's been a while since I looked at WHFRP, and I sold off my copy a while back, but I wouldn't be surprised at all it that's the way it went. But I seem to recall that the last pre-FFG game was. on the one hand, able to provide some ways to prevent rapid death, but on the other hand, once your luck ran out, death came quickly.
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