What is it exactly that we're rushing towards?

[JellyPooga]

No, this type of system works quite well for abstracting poisoned arrows;. Here's a simple example:
[snip]
The roll of 14 is also a hit (17) so HP damage is dealt, and since the natural roll of 14 was even, poison applies. This hit will have to be narrated as dealing actual damage.
The defenders armour stopped most of the arrows force, but a minor wound was still inflicted by the point, the arrow almost missed but managed to inflict a minor wound, etc.

I don't even think you need to narrate the hit as a "minor hit" or "graze"...the mere threat of a poison that does nothing until it knocks you out or kills you should be sufficient to deplete your narrativium, luck, fate or whatever plot armour HP represents more than a non-poisoned one should and the more deadly the poison, the greater the impact to your ability to continue adding to the narrative should be, just as a giant's maul or a fall from greater height represents a larger threat that, though avoided, still impacts your HP to that greater degree.

"The hydra's fangs drip smoking venom as one head chews on naught but your shield, this time, as you raise it in the nick of time. You struggle to hold on to your aegis as the sinuous neck rears back for another strike." is an attack that hits dealing more damage than if we were to remove the smoking venom, even though the poison never actually makes contact with you because if it did, it would surely mean a grisly end for our plucky hero.

Now imagine the same scenario, except the poison damage is what tips our hero to 0hp when the bite damage did not. We might add something like "With your concentration on the next strike to come, you didn't notice the acrid venom coating your shield, sliding inexorably toward the top. As you raise it once more to defend yourself as it has so many times before, your faithful defender betrays you; a single drop of the beasts poison falls precariously from the corner of your kite and straight into your eye. Your vision blurs and agony rips through you as the insidious poison wreaks its havoc on the flimsy, unprotected membranes there. You fall to the ground and unconsciousness takes you."

[stoutstien]

I don't even think you need to narrate the hit as a "minor hit" or "graze"...the mere threat of a poison that does nothing until it knocks you out or kills you should be sufficient to deplete your narrativium, luck, fate or whatever plot armour HP represents more than a non-poisoned one should and the more deadly the poison, the greater the impact to your ability to continue adding to the narrative should be, just as a giant's maul or a fall from greater height represents a larger threat that, though avoided, still impacts your HP to that greater degree.

"The hydra's fangs drip smoking venom as one head chews on naught but your shield, this time, as you raise it in the nick of time. You struggle to hold on to your aegis as the sinuous neck rears back for another strike." is an attack that hits dealing more damage than if we were to remove the smoking venom, even though the poison never actually makes contact with you because if it did, it would surely mean a grisly end for our plucky hero.

Now imagine the same scenario, except the poison damage is what tips our hero to 0hp when the bite damage did not. We might add something like "With your concentration on the next strike to come, you didn't notice the acrid venom coating your shield, sliding inexorably toward the top. As you raise it once more to defend yourself as it has so many times before, your faithful defender betrays you; a single drop of the beasts poison falls precariously from the corner of your kite and straight into your eye. Your vision blurs and agony rips through you as the insidious poison wreaks its havoc on the flimsy, unprotected membranes there. You fall to the ground and unconsciousness takes you."

So the poison condition is not you actually being poisoned but merely the threat of being poisoned? That seems odd to me because you have different options that can remove the condition which you wouldn't be able to remove the threat of a condition or it gets really funky.

[Psyren]

Maybe yours don't
Its easy to tack on exhaustion, max HP reduction and other conditions when you're making custom poisons. My personal favourite is also inducing confusion or enfeeblement (as per the spells)

Well sure, I'm not saying that wouldn't be fun but if you're going to homebrew outside the lines then you need to be the one to figure out how to square the effects of your custom poison with the game's assumed health abstraction, not the designers.

Poisons work fine. They're just a defeater to the argument of abstraction of damage. You can't be poisoned by a dart that "luckily missed," for example.

No, but that luck can cause it to have grazed/scratched you rather than hitting a blood vessel or vital organ - which would be the difference between taking poison damage at high HP vs taking it at low HP.

(I tack on archery as a defeater to the argument of abstraction of attacks, just for fun. While ammo is tracked, you can't say you shoot a bunch of times until you hit with a single "attack roll" - the quiver knows better.)

As above, the abstraction is not between "arrow hits" vs "arrow shoots wide." The abstraction is between "hit at high HP" (arrow grazes/nicks/character wrenches something while marginally dodging) and "hit at low HP" (arrow is square-on.)

[Theodoxus]

So, if I have this right, Psyren, it sounds like you're saying Luck and Meat are essentially intermixed. That even if you're at 100% HP, a poisoned arrow that hits higher than your AC is finding a bit of meat, dealing poison HP damage to that meat, but you still have Luck HP hanging out ready to "avoid" a sword swing (provided said poison doesn't drop you to 0 HP).

I can get behind that interpretation for a 5E game.

If I misconstrued your point, I apologize.

[stoutstien]

So, if I have this right, Psyren, it sounds like you're saying Luck and Meat are essentially intermixed. That even if you're at 100% HP, a poisoned arrow that hits higher than your AC is finding a bit of meat, dealing poison HP damage to that meat, but you still have Luck HP hanging out ready to "avoid" a sword swing (provided said poison doesn't drop you to 0 HP).

I can get behind that interpretation for a 5E game.

If I misconstrued your point, I apologize.

I think this is about the only way single pool HP can works regardless of the system. IMO for DND it's probably the best idea because HP is practically an unavoidable degrees of progress to prevent instan-splat both ways.

I think it works better if you can't just easily fill up between or in fights but that's a personal taste thing.

[Psyren]

So, if I have this right, Psyren, it sounds like you're saying Luck and Meat are essentially intermixed. That even if you're at 100% HP, a poisoned arrow that hits higher than your AC is finding a bit of meat, dealing poison HP damage to that meat, but you still have Luck HP hanging out ready to "avoid" a sword swing (provided said poison doesn't drop you to 0 HP).

I can get behind that interpretation for a 5E game.

If I misconstrued your point, I apologize.

You're pretty much there. The key is that meat != meat, even in our world - a stingray stabbing your ankle and one stabbing your heart are both hitting "meat" but one is a lot more likely to kill you, and in the HP abstraction the one that got to your heart either got you while you were already worn down (low avoidance/luck) from something else, or you got supremely unlucky (critical hit, which bypassed a lot of your "luck" entirely.) Or even both. Either way, 5e would represent the latter scenario by the blow doing enough damage to take you to zero.

I think this is about the only way single pool HP can works regardless of the system. IMO for DND it's probably the best idea because HP is practically an unavoidable degrees of progress to prevent instan-splat both ways.

I think it works better if you can't just easily fill up between or in fights but that's a personal taste thing.

To me, the far easier way to address this (if it even needs addressing) is by implementing one of the grittier rest variants, rather than by trying to overhaul/bifurcate HP entirely.

[stoutstien]

To me, the far easier way to address this (if it even needs addressing) is by implementing one of the grittier rest variants, rather than by trying to overhaul/bifurcate HP entirely.

I've found that changing the rest recovery cycle doesn't do much because you're just changing the time scale but not the ratio.

Although I wouldn't really worry about changing HP in DND at all. It works fine for it's job.

If you were designing something from the ground up then yeah I'd look at alternatives because why not.

[Theodoxus]

I've found that changing the rest recovery cycle doesn't do much because you're just changing the time scale but not the ratio.

There's a few more knobs you can turn to get a better feeling for what works for your campaign, like 3 day LR, 1 day SR, or even week long LR, 5 minute SR - for your Warlock players - lol.

I also like using the slower healing time too, especially with some kind of cap on magical healing (I was just reading about a system that uses a mechanic called Strain that builds up as you receive magical healing and drops down a point a day. If you go with the AD&D natural healing of 1 point per day (long rest) or 3 for bed rest, and use something akin to Strain to cap off your magical healing, it'll force downtime when your PCs have to either burn off Strain, or rest up naturally (or both, in the worst case scenario!).

Although I wouldn't really worry about changing HP in DND at all. It works fine for it's job.

If you were designing something from the ground up then yeah I'd look at alternatives because why not.

Honestly, that's what I'm doing; between reading different systems and getting ideas for forums like this, I'm trying to eek out the best (meaning more realistic, yet still usable) system for HP representation (be it a single HP pool like D&D or a tiered damage system like Daggerheart, or Wounds/Vitality like Star Wars SAGA... I'm trying to settle on a system where linger wounds are a thing, but not overly crippling except as a sacrifice for staying alive. A 5E equivalent would be getting dropped to zero and failing your death saves. You'd have to option to auto-stabilize instead of die, but you're going to garner a permanent Wound - a sacrifice to some stat(s). Off the top of my head, maybe reducing a total of (6 - Con mod) from any stats you choose, which a description by the player as to what it looks like. So, your beefy barbarian gets reduced to zero HP and subsequently dies, the player can sacrifice attribute points to stabilize instead of dying. If his Con is 17, then he'd have to sacrifice 3 attribute points, chosen however he'd like. Say he takes 2 points to Int and 1 point to Cha, he could describe it as a massive scar down the side of face and a small divot gouged out of his skull. Obviously, there will be some in-game way to restore the lost points via quest or Wish or whatever - but it keeps players from losing a beloved character on a bad roll and all the problems of bringing a new character into an established party/story - and it discourages reckless behavior, because you know you're going to have some pretty gnarly consequences for dying. (Or it'll make everyone want to play a Zealot - lol.

I also like the idea of more realistic to life damage. And as a corollary, a bit more deadly game all around. I hate HP bloat with a passion. But I don't relish keeping my players stuck in tier 1 either - I'd like them to play with the toys, but I don't want to have to run 50 dragons to have a chance at knocking them out.

It's an interesting rope to walk, that's for sure.

[stoutstien]

There's a few more knobs you can turn to get a better feeling for what works for your campaign, like 3 day LR, 1 day SR, or even week long LR, 5 minute SR - for your Warlock players - lol.

I also like using the slower healing time too, especially with some kind of cap on magical healing (I was just reading about a system that uses a mechanic called Strain that builds up as you receive magical healing and drops down a point a day. If you go with the AD&D natural healing of 1 point per day (long rest) or 3 for bed rest, and use something akin to Strain to cap off your magical healing, it'll force downtime when your PCs have to either burn off Strain, or rest up naturally (or both, in the worst case scenario!).



Honestly, that's what I'm doing; between reading different systems and getting ideas for forums like this, I'm trying to eek out the best (meaning more realistic, yet still usable) system for HP representation (be it a single HP pool like D&D or a tiered damage system like Daggerheart, or Wounds/Vitality like Star Wars SAGA... I'm trying to settle on a system where linger wounds are a thing, but not overly crippling except as a sacrifice for staying alive. A 5E equivalent would be getting dropped to zero and failing your death saves. You'd have to option to auto-stabilize instead of die, but you're going to garner a permanent Wound - a sacrifice to some stat(s). Off the top of my head, maybe reducing a total of (6 - Con mod) from any stats you choose, which a description by the player as to what it looks like. So, your beefy barbarian gets reduced to zero HP and subsequently dies, the player can sacrifice attribute points to stabilize instead of dying. If his Con is 17, then he'd have to sacrifice 3 attribute points, chosen however he'd like. Say he takes 2 points to Int and 1 point to Cha, he could describe it as a massive scar down the side of face and a small divot gouged out of his skull. Obviously, there will be some in-game way to restore the lost points via quest or Wish or whatever - but it keeps players from losing a beloved character on a bad roll and all the problems of bringing a new character into an established party/story - and it discourages reckless behavior, because you know you're going to have some pretty gnarly consequences for dying. (Or it'll make everyone want to play a Zealot - lol.

I also like the idea of more realistic to life damage. And as a corollary, a bit more deadly game all around. I hate HP bloat with a passion. But I don't relish keeping my players stuck in tier 1 either - I'd like them to play with the toys, but I don't want to have to run 50 dragons to have a chance at knocking them out.

It's an interesting rope to walk, that's for sure.

Oh looks like you found worlds without number.
Probably the best d&d derivative out there. I'm not crazy about the 2d6 for skill checks but he did take the time to hammer out the math so it does work.

[JellyPooga]

So the poison condition is not you actually being poisoned but merely the threat of being poisoned? That seems odd to me because you have different options that can remove the condition which you wouldn't be able to remove the threat of a condition or it gets really funky.

The poisoned condition is a bit different to poison damage, yes. The same would apply to other conditions inflicted by other poisons too, but in terms of HP damage abstraction alone, I didn't think those relevant to the discussion.