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View Full Version : D&D 5e/Next Fighting Spirit II: Electric HP-A-Loo



JNAProductions
2018-05-09, 11:34 PM
Link to original thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?531771-Fighting-Spirit-(An-Unoriginal-Idea-For-HP)&p=22243345#post22243345)



HP is replaced by Fighting Spirit (or Will to Live, or Heroic Effort, or whatever you feel like calling it). HP is now PURELY meat.

Gain Fighting Spirit like you would normally-Barbarians get 1d12+Con mod, Fighters get 1d10 base, Wizards d6, etc. This represents dodging, magical barriers, armor tankiness, etc. You might take flesh wounds, but no serious damage is dealt while you still have Fighting Spirit left. Healing Magic works normally, as do Hit Dice, on Fighting Spirit.

Barbarian (Non-Magical): Raw fury and muscle. You take hits, but you TANK hits! When your Fighting Spirit is low, you should be a bloody, bruised mess, but god-DAMN can they not put you down! Note that you're still dodging and taking only glancing blows. When your HP is taking damage, they finally cut deep into your meat.

Barbarian (Magical): You might have spirit animals warding off blows, or ancestral guardians raising their shields against blades that would cut into your flesh.

Bard: A swirl of your cloak, a trill from your flute that summons a barrier of glowing light, or anything like that. Your defenses are, if not SUBTLE, not omnipresent. Be flashy, but they shouldn't be obvious when not in use.

Cleric (Light Armor and some Medium Armor): You have divine wards, shields of solid faith that block blows, and only begin to crack when you run low on Fighting Spirit. Perhaps you also are surrounded by billowing incense that conceals your true location, but mostly, you're blocking hits with magic.

Cleric (Heavy Armor and some Medium Armor): In addition to above, you also take blows solidly on your armor. It grows pitted and dented as you fight, but stays strong until your Fighting Spirit breaks and enemies can easily get into the chinks.

Druid: Sudden bark-like protrusions on your skin that stop daggers solid, or twisting and re-knitting flesh as your body shifts to rapidly heal what wounds you do take.

Fighter: Stamina. You dodge, you tank hits on your shield, you absorb blows on your heavy armor... Fighting Spirit represents your stamina and skill to avoid getting hit, and as you get tired, you get ever-closer to that fatal blow.

Monk: Dodge, dodge, and dodge again. Even more than a Fighter, this is stamina, and perhaps a zen state of battle focus.

Paladin: Fighter crossed with Cleric.

Ranger: Fighter crossed with Druid.

Rogue: Like Monk, but more dirty tricks, usually. Sand in their eyes, a swift kick to the nethers to knock them back... But largely dodging.

Sorcerer, Warlock, and Wizard: Arcane wards of immense potency. Solid slabs of force or lightning, billowing walls of flame, big, flashy, dramatic barriers of tangible nature.

Note that these are all SUGGESTIONS. If they don't fit, refluff away! Have fun with it!

You gain actual HP at levels 1, 5, 11, and 17-the beginning of each tier. You gain this like you'd normally gain HP (hit die+Con mod, maxed at level 1) with the exception that you gain HP based on whatever your MAJORITY class is. So a Wizard 4/Fighter 1 only gains 1d6 HP at level 5, despite taking a level of Fighter then, since they are mostly Wizard. (If tied, such as a Fighter 2/Cleric 2/Wizard 1, player chooses, and will presumably choose Fighter in this case.)

You only lose HP when you're out of Fighting Spirit. Overkill from Fighting Spirit does NOT affect HP-so players are guaranteed to survive at least one hit, no matter how deadly. The DM may rule certain damage may bypass this, such as falling damage.

Since HP taking damage is now actual, serious blows, you effectively gain one level of exhaustion for every quarter of HP total that you take in damage. So, if you have 12 HP, you are treated as having one level of exhaustion at 9 HP, two at 6 HP, etc. This does NOT stack with regular exhaustion.

If you drop to 0 HP, start making death saving throws as normal. In addition, the DM can rule that certain attacks that drop you to 0 HP may have additional effects-such as severing a limb, breaking a collarbone, or other grievous injuries. (At a minimum, you've probably got a nasty scar.)

THP is treated similarly to Fighting Spirit, and is affected first, before Fighting Spirit or HP. The difference is you CAN overkill from THP. If you had 3 THP and 4 Fighting Spirit, taking 5 points of damage would leave at 0 THP and 2 Fighting Spirit. However, taking 10 points of damage would drop both to 0, but NOT affect your HP, since you still had Fighting Spirit.

Critical Hits are the main change for Fighting Spirit II. When you deal a critical hit, you deal regular damage to Fighting Spirit, and one point of damage to HP per die rolled. (So, a greatsword critting does 4 points of HP damage, as well as 4d6+Strength mod damage to Fighting Spirit. A level 20 Rogue popping Stroke of Luck to crit the BBEG with a bow? Does 22 points of HP damage, as well as 22d6+Dexterity mod Fighting Spirit damage.)

Feel like a lucky shot from a commoner shouldn't be able to punch through Fighting Spirit? Whenever someone crits, roll a die based on proficiency modifier:

+1=1d1
+2=1d2
+3=1d4
+4=1d6
+5=1d8
+6=1d10
+7 or higher=1d12

If the defender equals or beats the aggressor, the crit is simply resolved against Fighting Spirit. No HP damage.

This means that your average commoner with a bow, if you give them +2 proficiency, has a 5% chance to deal 2 points of HP damage on a crit to a 20th level character.

As a general rule, spells should be able to heal, AT MAX, a number of HP equal to the level they can be cast at. So Healing Word, from a level 1 slot, can heal 1d4+Casting mod Fighting Spirit, but only 1 HP. If cast from a 2nd level slot, it can heal up to 3 HP.

Most monsters should NOT use Fighting Spirit-they should be able to be one shotted, and it's a hassle to track for a bunch of mooks. Bosses, though, should be built with Fighting Spirit, as should other people of combat importance. However, even if you don't use Fighting Spirit on a random monster, a crit should inflict a level of exhuastion on it, unless it was a really weak crit, to represent the blow their HP would take should they be using Fighting Spirit.

Natural healing works as follows: You gain 1 HP per tier per long rest. Double that if someone in the party has Medicine proficiency, triple if they have Expertise. Double that again if you have a Healer's kit and expend one use per person healing. If you would regain at least 5 HP on a long rest, you may regain 1/5th the long rest amount on a short rest.

A note on some random spells:

Goodberry should not be allowed to heal HP at all. Just... No. Fighting Spirit only.

Any spell that auto-kills when you hit 0 HP (such as Disintegrate) should auto-kill if you hit 0 Fighting Spirit.

Power Word spells are based on Fighting Spirit, rather than HP. For obvious reasons.

What should probably overkill Fighting Spirit into HP:

Falling damage.

Um... Suggestions?

redfeline
2020-09-29, 04:05 PM
For suggestions on bypassing fighting spirit. I'd say artifact weapons should do 1hp per tier of play to the target. It isn't much but would really add some threat to what may otherwise be a fairly boring artifact.

Similarly weapons of a significantly larger category may be interesting where: Gargantuan and huge weapons bypass it for Medium and smaller, while large bypasses it for Tiny. Again I would say 1hp damage bypassing fighting spirit. This would make enlarge person a very useful spell as it blocks the direct hp damage. I wouldn't hand this out to natural weapons.

Perhaps add a legendary action to creatures with legendary actions to allow them to do direct hp damage for an attack at a 1 legend cost and all attacks as a 2 legend cost.



--------feedback--------------
Bypassing fighting spirit on fall damage as is could really up the lethality of pit traps. Fall 30ft take 3d6 for an average of 10 damage and you just killed a 4th level wizard. With luck it could kill a 4th level fighter or barbarian. So I would reduce fall damage to 1d4 per 10 feet or maybe have only half go to hp and the other half to fight spirit. A similar piece of feedback would be needed for all my suggestions too.

BerzerkerUnit
2020-09-29, 04:53 PM
Poison should overkill.
Some poisons should bypass fighting spirit

JNAProductions
2020-09-29, 04:59 PM
For suggestions on bypassing fighting spirit. I'd say artifact weapons should do 1hp per tier of play to the target. It isn't much but would really add some threat to what may otherwise be a fairly boring artifact.

Similarly weapons of a significantly larger category may be interesting where: Gargantuan and huge weapons bypass it for Medium and smaller, while large bypasses it for Tiny. Again I would say 1hp damage bypassing fighting spirit. This would make enlarge person a very useful spell as it blocks the direct hp damage. I wouldn't hand this out to natural weapons.

Perhaps add a legendary action to creatures with legendary actions to allow them to do direct hp damage for an attack at a 1 legend cost and all attacks as a 2 legend cost.



--------feedback--------------
Bypassing fighting spirit on fall damage as is could really up the lethality of pit traps. Fall 30ft take 3d6 for an average of 10 damage and you just killed a 4th level wizard. With luck it could kill a 4th level fighter or barbarian. So I would reduce fall damage to 1d4 per 10 feet or maybe have only half go to hp and the other half to fight spirit. A similar piece of feedback would be needed for all my suggestions too.

Fall Damage overkills, not bypasses. So a 4th level Wizard with 14 Con (8 HP, 26 Fighting Spirit) would take, from full, 10 points of FS damage, leaving them at 16 and 8 HP.

Apologies if that wasn't clear!


Poison should overkill.
Some poisons should bypass fighting spirit

To the latter, agreed.

To the former, probably not the kind of poison you see in statblocks. That'd make spiders and other poisonous creatures far too deadly, and make dwarves unneededly better.

BigDumbYak
2020-09-29, 10:44 PM
I think its a solid idea but why repeat the class hit die for both Fighting Spirit and Actual HP?

If we already have standard RAW HP converted to Fighting Sprit, we obviously want to have a far smaller pool for Actual HP so we don't bloat the heroes into massive HP sponges and the entire game loses its threat of danger. You suggest Actual HP gains at tier levels but still use the hit die, so just for some numbers, at clvl 11, a ranger could have an average of 87 hit points (assuming they have a +2 CON MOD) then an additional 33 Actual HP for a total of 120 HP. Now crits and poison can really mess up Actual HP but an extra ~30% just seems like a lot to me (but I do prefer faster, lower HP models in general).

So instead of using the Hit Die for Actual HP, why not make it a bit more thematic, and use the creature's size:

Small - 3+CON
Medium 4+CON
Large - 6+CON



This might help level out some of the classes, (wizards most likely benefit from this while most martial classes lose a bit of their staying power). As I noodle this around some more, I just get stuck on Fighting Spirit is the character's training, and Actual HP are the character's health, condition, brawn, etc. This way an enormous brusier (size large) who is just a violent braggart (not a trained barbarian or fighter), may have minimal Fighting Spirit but would be able to take more physical wounds than an old, frail veteran warrior, while the warrior would bank on their years of service and skill to shield them as old age has weakened their bones and thinned their skin.

That all being said, I think this is an excellent idea and have tried to figure something similar out myself with no such luck!

jjordan
2020-09-30, 05:55 PM
I like it.