Subsystems and You 9: Wound Thresholds
I believe it was Gary Gygax himself who said that hit points were an abstraction not just of a capacity to take injury and keep fighting, but also of fighting spirit, vitality, and perhaps a bit of divine investment in the success of the character or creature. In this way, a blow that would kill a first level character in one swing might be a light graze, proportionally, for a character in the upper limits of mortal power.
This system, however, is admittedly not very realistic. Even with the use of healing magic, injuries tend to wear on the body, as pain and physical damage make it more difficult to perform at full capacity.
While other systems might use complex wound systems that represent the debilitating damage and even loss of body parts, today we’ll be looking at a happy medium between the hit points of old and wound charts. I give you, Wound Thresholds.
Essentially, the wound threshold divides the total hp of a creature into four groups. In the first quarter, a creature is still perfectly healthy despite their wounds, in the second, they begin to feel the weight of their wounds, weakening them slightly in every aspect, from combat to skills to saves to even their ability to focus on higher-level spells. Past the halfway point, the pain and penalties mount, and this continues into the final quarter, where they are struggling to maintain consciousness.
What’s more, in this system, characters can stay conscious below 0 hp if their constitution is high enough.
While this system provides a realistic edge to combat and rewards you for actually using healing spells at times other than the character being near-death, it is also a system that can really punish those who have already suffered, leading to a rapid downward spiral, or even longer combats as both sides begin to struggle to even hit each other in significant ways. What’s more, in big combats with a lot of foes, GMs are recommended to only count the halfway point when determining wound penalties, as this is easier than keeping track of countless enemies individual wound thresholds.
That might appeal to you, and there’s an even grittier version as well which doubles all the penalties for each threshold, making mortality even more dread-worthy than normal. In the end, this is a system that makes the game a bit harder by making health management much more important.
That does it for today, so see you tomorrow!