"Realistic" damage rules

[Strudel1000]

Hi all, I'm relatively new to D&D (5e only so far), and as fun as it is, I am always interested in mechanics that make it more realistic (without making it too inconvenient). One thing that has always bothered me is the abstraction of HP, and how it doesn't represent health as much as it represents an arbitrary measure of fortitude.

I was inspired by a "lingering injury" table that my DM in a new campaign has instituted. Their system uses percentages; for example, when a character takes damage representing 15% of their total HP, they receive a minor injury, and when they take damage representing 30% of their total HP, they receive a major injury. (I fudged the exact numbers because I'm not sure if they want their system to be shared.)

I came up with a simple homebrew basis for HP representing health and damage. It's far from a finished product so I would love feedback! I'm sure other people have worked on similar projects as well, so I would love to see other people's work that is in a similar vein.

At full health, a creature is at "perfect" health, and suffers no penalties.

-At 3/4 of full health, a creature has received enough minor damage that their pain distracts them from functioning at maximum capacity. They take a -2 penalty to attack rolls, saving throws, and ability checks.

-At 1/2 of full health, a creature is "bloodied," and is suffering notable impairments due to their injuries. In addition to the -2 penalty to attack rolls, saving throws, and ability checks, their speed drops by 10' per round. The type of damage that reduced them to 1/2 health (or below) details a further minor disadvantage.

-At 1/4 of full health, a creature is near death, and further damage/exertion will worsen symptoms. When a creature drops to the 1/4 threshold or below, they receive an adrenaline rush of 1d10 turns, during which the -2 penalty/10' reduction in speed do not apply; after this adrenaline rush is over, these penalties come into action again. The type of damage that reduced them below the 1/4 HP threshold sometimes gives a further disadvantage.



Bludgeoning/Force/Thunder Damage: Affecting bones and structure, taking these types of damage and dipping below the 1/2 HP threshold gives disadvantage to all rolls involving STR.
Cold/Lightning/Necrotic Damage: Affecting muscles and internals, taking these types of damage and dipping below the 1/2 HP threshold gives disadvantage to all rolls involving DEX.
Acid/Fire/Radiant Damage: Damaging skin and tissue, taking these types of damage gives disadvantage to all rolls involving CON.
Piercing/Slashing Damage: Causing blood to flow, taking these types of damage and dipping below the 1/2 HP threshold means that, without any kind of healing or first aid, in 1d6 turns a creature will take 1/2 of the damage of the original attack that pushed the creature below the threshold. Taking these types of damage and dipping below the 1/4 HP threshold means that, without any kind of healing or first aid, in 1d6 turns the creature will fall unconscious.
Psychic Damage: Affecting the mind, creatures whose health dips below 1/2 full HP due to psychic damage suffer one form of short term madness (see DMG p259. The madness lasts 1d10 rounds instead of 1d10 minutes). Dipping below 1/4 health inflicts a second form of short term madness.
Poison Damage: Couldn't think of anything special. Depending on the type of attack/poison, one could use one of the sample poisons from the DMG (p258).



This concept is totally untested, so it may be extremely unbalanced. I would also say that it is noticeably more complicated than the current system of damage vulnerabilities and resistances, although I tried to keep it as intuitive as possible. The type of campaign that might use this rule is also the type of campaign that might use the variant rule of short rest=8 hours, long rest=1 week.

Like I said, I would love feedback/advice/suggestions/criticism, as well as historical precedents! I'm sure I'm not the first nerd who's wanted an unnecessarily detailed combat system ;p

[BerzerkerUnit]

I'm going to try out a system where players can spend inspiration to Wound enemies and a "karma" system that feeds BBEG types with inspiration they can spend for the same, probably limited to 3 instances and the option to burn legendary actions for an encounter if they're really making him mad.

My next campaign will also be using a technical crit rule (beating foe AC by 5 just deals maximum damage), hit dice only refresh when you level (making healing items and magic a lot more valuable and important) and a "reserves" system where Players have back up characters that can rush in to bail their mains out but which also present secondary objectives and NPCs can do things that "target reserves" basically taking themselves out of the fight to whittle down that safety net. Then PCs have to decide whether they press the current fight or devote resources to aiding the reserves (basically something like quick time events to manage action economy in big fights where they could be overrun).

[John Out West]

I usually have the players starting HP (Max die + Con) as their actual health, and the rest of their HP is an active defense. (Dodge, dip, dive, duck, and dodging) Most healing magic only "invigorates" and can't heal real wounds, so players need to either use higher level spells or allow themselves to heal naturally. Rests also only took 5 minutes instead of an hour, since all they were doing is catching their breath. (Hit dice went a lot faster in this version, but resting after every fight made a lot more sense when its only 5 minutes in-game.)

What i did before that is, I would cause a character to become injured every time they were knocked unconscious, this was largely to prevent players from going down, but then being brought back with 1hp continuously. Similarly, it used a chart.

This is all to say that i disagree with the way you're going about this, treating each and every "Hit" on a character as a blow that draws blood, so to speak. It implies that the characters have no active defense and are constantly being stabbed, which is unrealistic and antithetical to your goal. If i were to make a suggestion, it would be to include some sort of active defense. Real fights with weapons tend to end in a single, decisive blow, with all other attacks being either dodged, parried, or merely a flesh wound or glancing blow. (Can you think of any movie fight where characters constantly stabbed each other, and continued fighting?)

Now if you were to apply your chart to exhaustion, i would be all onboard. Being at 1/2 your endurance would certainly give penalties, most likely reducing strength and dexterity mods. Magic users would probably have trouble concentrating on their spells, and barbarians would have trouble keeping enthusiastically enraged.

I hope that helps!

[Zhorn]

(Can you think of any movie fight where characters constantly stabbed each other, and continued fighting?)
I feel like the answer to this should be John Wick :smallwink:

@OP, looking forwards to reading updates and development on this. Having dabbled in this in the past, I know there's a lot of finessing that will go into getting the balance just right, and so much of it will depend on actual play-testing to find what works and what drags.
Biggest advice I would give is to avoid any discussion of HP being meat and/or not meat. That whole debate is a fruitless pursuit that only leads to headache and arguments.

[Dienekes]

So some questions.

How does one determine what damage type effects their character? Lets say a character takes 49.999% of their health in Psychic. Then take 1 or 2 damage from piercing to tip them over the edge of your health tier. Do they suffer the effects of psychic or piercing?

On the whole it’s an interesting system though I will warn you this will cause death spirals which a lot of players do not find fun when it happens to them. Essentially making them feel useless even though they’re still “up.” And it makes having one big boss monster even easier than they are in base 5e.

If I can make a suggestion of systems you might want to look at for ideas. Star Wars Saga Edition has the Condition Track which also acts as a means of weakening opponents before they’re out of HP only it takes effect depending on the damage dealt on the hit as opposed to the total damage taken by the Target. As in if someone just takes a bunch of small thin cuts they will not be effected until they die. But if someone takes off a huge chunk of health in one hit the target falls down the condition track. This allowed big enemies to have resistance to a lot of the effects because they were less likely to have the damage effect them. And gave tools for the players to fiddle about with to improve their conditions negate attacks or reduce damage to play around the mechanic.

Starfinder separates HP into Stamina and Health. Losing Stamina meant you successfully dodged the attack or turned a hit into only a bruise or a scratch. While once that ran out you deal damage to a much smaller supply of Health where one or two hits means the character dies. This can allow for some neat interactions where attacking a completely unaware character can just let you go straight for their Health or something. But it does solve the “Ive been stabbed 49 times but I’m still standing!” problem.

And lastly Riddle of Steel has just about the most realistic combat and damage system I’ve ever played. But the game focuses a lot of its combat on trying to avoid being damaged at all costs.

[Strudel1000]

My next campaign will also be using a technical crit rule (beating foe AC by 5 just deals maximum damage), hit dice only refresh when you level (making healing items and magic a lot more valuable and important) and a "reserves" system where Players have back up characters that can rush in to bail their mains out but which also present secondary objectives and NPCs can do things that "target reserves" basically taking themselves out of the fight to whittle down that safety net. Then PCs have to decide whether they press the current fight or devote resources to aiding the reserves (basically something like quick time events to manage action economy in big fights where they could be overrun).

That sounds like a great way to get players to preserve their resources and rely on healing and magic! I also like the idea of having NPCs/sidekicks, as that takes the pressure off of each PC and makes fights more survivable without lowering the stakes.


I usually have the players starting HP (Max die + Con) as their actual health, and the rest of their HP is an active defense. (Dodge, dip, dive, duck, and dodging)

I feel like this is a much simpler way of thinking about HP that makes it feel much more "realistic"! Getting more experience/leveling up doesn't make you able to take more stab wounds, it makes you more capable of dodging those stabs in the first place. Would you be okay if I used that system with some tweaks for a campaign of my own?
This also works better with a "lingering injury" or "deep wound" system; when you take damage that dips into your actual health, you receive a more serious injury than you would have gotten at full health.


This is all to say that i disagree with the way you're going about this, treating each and every "Hit" on a character as a blow that draws blood, so to speak. It implies that the characters have no active defense and are constantly being stabbed, which is unrealistic and antithetical to your goal. If i were to make a suggestion, it would be to include some sort of active defense. Real fights with weapons tend to end in a single, decisive blow, with all other attacks being either dodged, parried, or merely a flesh wound or glancing blow. (Can you think of any movie fight where characters constantly stabbed each other, and continued fighting?)

This is a good point, and sort of gets to where I was going when I came up with this damage system; taking a hit is serious business. If every attack is a successful hit, then fights would be over pretty quickly. But isn't a character's defense defined by their AC? In addition, wouldn't the dodge action represent an "active defense," so to speak?
My thought when I came up with this concept was to make taking a hit much more serious, and to give characters more incentive to avoid taking a lot of damage, which means they would work harder to improve their defense/reduce their odds of getting hit (especially if they are frontline characters).
However, I agree that for the purposes of base 5e, making each "hit" represent a wound is unrealistic, because I feel like the default HP system represents as much dodging and parrying as it does health, like you said.


How does one determine what damage type effects their character? Lets say a character takes 49.999% of their health in Psychic. Then take 1 or 2 damage from piercing to tip them over the edge of your health tier. Do they suffer the effects of psychic or piercing?

On the whole it’s an interesting system though I will warn you this will cause death spirals which a lot of players do not find fun when it happens to them. Essentially making them feel useless even though they’re still “up.” And it makes having one big boss monster even easier than they are in base 5e.


That's a very good question. If I was leaning towards simplicity, I would rule that whatever the actual damage was that pushed them over the ½ health tier would be the one that has the effect. If I was leaning towards realism, I would probably have some kind of system to keep track of what percentage between each tier was what type of damage... but that sounds too complicated to even think about :p

I really appreciate these resources! I will definitely look into these combat rules for inspiration, because a lot of them are exactly what I was looking for. The one from Starfinder definitely resemble's @John Out West's system, where most of a character's HP represents their stamina/ability to dodge or otherwise avoid attacks.
I like the suggestion about Riddle of Steel as well, because that's sort of the effect I wanted to go for; this system is designed to influence players to avoid combat/damage as much as possible. At the same time, I recognize that this is not ideal from a gameplay perspective, because half the fun of roleplaying is being able to leap into dangerous situations and not get hurt- this is fantasy after all, and no one wants a death spiral to happen to them!

[Composer99]

Hi all, I'm relatively new to D&D (5e only so far), and as fun as it is, I am always interested in mechanics that make it more realistic (without making it too inconvenient). One thing that has always bothered me is the abstraction of HP, and how it doesn't represent health as much as it represents an arbitrary measure of fortitude.

I was inspired by a "lingering injury" table that my DM in a new campaign has instituted. Their system uses percentages; for example, when a character takes damage representing 15% of their total HP, they receive a minor injury, and when they take damage representing 30% of their total HP, they receive a major injury. (I fudged the exact numbers because I'm not sure if they want their system to be shared.)

I came up with a simple homebrew basis for HP representing health and damage. It's far from a finished product so I would love feedback! I'm sure other people have worked on similar projects as well, so I would love to see other people's work that is in a similar vein.

At full health, a creature is at "perfect" health, and suffers no penalties.

-At 3/4 of full health, a creature has received enough minor damage that their pain distracts them from functioning at maximum capacity. They take a -2 penalty to attack rolls, saving throws, and ability checks.

-At 1/2 of full health, a creature is "bloodied," and is suffering notable impairments due to their injuries. In addition to the -2 penalty to attack rolls, saving throws, and ability checks, their speed drops by 10' per round. The type of damage that reduced them to 1/2 health (or below) details a further minor disadvantage.

-At 1/4 of full health, a creature is near death, and further damage/exertion will worsen symptoms. When a creature drops to the 1/4 threshold or below, they receive an adrenaline rush of 1d10 turns, during which the -2 penalty/10' reduction in speed do not apply; after this adrenaline rush is over, these penalties come into action again. The type of damage that reduced them below the 1/4 HP threshold sometimes gives a further disadvantage.



Bludgeoning/Force/Thunder Damage: Affecting bones and structure, taking these types of damage and dipping below the 1/2 HP threshold gives disadvantage to all rolls involving STR.
Cold/Lightning/Necrotic Damage: Affecting muscles and internals, taking these types of damage and dipping below the 1/2 HP threshold gives disadvantage to all rolls involving DEX.
Acid/Fire/Radiant Damage: Damaging skin and tissue, taking these types of damage gives disadvantage to all rolls involving CON.
Piercing/Slashing Damage: Causing blood to flow, taking these types of damage and dipping below the 1/2 HP threshold means that, without any kind of healing or first aid, in 1d6 turns a creature will take 1/2 of the damage of the original attack that pushed the creature below the threshold. Taking these types of damage and dipping below the 1/4 HP threshold means that, without any kind of healing or first aid, in 1d6 turns the creature will fall unconscious.
Psychic Damage: Affecting the mind, creatures whose health dips below 1/2 full HP due to psychic damage suffer one form of short term madness (see DMG p259. The madness lasts 1d10 rounds instead of 1d10 minutes). Dipping below 1/4 health inflicts a second form of short term madness.
Poison Damage: Couldn't think of anything special. Depending on the type of attack/poison, one could use one of the sample poisons from the DMG (p258).



This concept is totally untested, so it may be extremely unbalanced. I would also say that it is noticeably more complicated than the current system of damage vulnerabilities and resistances, although I tried to keep it as intuitive as possible. The type of campaign that might use this rule is also the type of campaign that might use the variant rule of short rest=8 hours, long rest=1 week.

Like I said, I would love feedback/advice/suggestions/criticism, as well as historical precedents! I'm sure I'm not the first nerd who's wanted an unnecessarily detailed combat system ;p

So, basically, what you have here are two things:
(1) A death spiral.
(2) Rider effects for different types of damage when someone crosses a certain threshold of the death spiral.

First, a general wording nitpick: for added clarity, I think any effect that includes a variable-length triggered effect - mainly the bleeding damage - should specify that it triggers at the start of your turn, just as most ongoing damage effects do (such as being set alight by fire, or being in the area of a spirit guardians spell).

Death Spiral
Now, I'm not a big fan of death spirals per se, but as death spirals go this one is pretty good, and, even better, it's largely in line with the 5e design aesthetic. The adrenaline rush when you hit 1/4 hit points is an interesting effect, one that sort of negates the death spiral for a brief time - probably long enough to end the combat (given how long most of them last).

Also interesting is that the effect indirectly addresses the the 0-hit-point "inflatable punching clown" effect, where being healed as little as 1 hit point brings a character back up to full effectiveness. Instead, the amount of healing determines whether the character is still in the death spiral or not.

Some things to watch out for:
(1) Spellcasting is unaffected unless you have to make an attack roll or ability check as part of the spell. So, mysteriously, it gets harder to cast, say, dispel magic or firebolt, but not, say, sacred flame or charm person.

(2) Death spirals end up creating busywork all round - especially for player characters who might be incentivised to do more in-combat healing. Every time your hit points drop below a threshold, you have to apply an effect to your die rolls, then stop applying that effect if your hit points go back above the threshold, and so on and so forth. So there's definitely a table time and cognitive load cost to the death spiral. That is not to say that this is bad per se - if the enjoyment that the table gets from the death spiral mechanic outweighs these costs, then they are definitely worth it. But it is worth mentioning.

Damage Riders
The rider effects on damage certainly add complexity; as with the death spiral, it boils down to whether the table enjoys the mechanic enough to make the costs worthwhile. The distinction created between bludgeoning weapons on the one hand, and piercing and slashing on the other, is particularly nice.

Specific remarks:
(1) Once again, spellcasting gets a pass. That may be intended, but it's something to look out for.
(2) I wonder if the poison damage rider should just be bestowing the poisoned condition? That's a pretty strong condition, but just as fire damage spells tend to be more powerful than equivalent spells dealing other types of damage, on account of the plenitude of creatures that resist or are immune to fire damage, given how many creatures resist or are immune to poison damage and/or the poisoned condition, it might make sense.

Taking a bit more of a general, philosophical tack on the nature of hit points:

I'm on record pointing out that most (all?) of the game mechanics through which D&D combat operates are very poor "verisimilitude models" (as it were), to the point that they break down under even the most cursory analysis of their realism, such as it is. As such, I think there's a certain necessity in coming to terms with their abstracted nature.

As hinted at upthread, treating hit points as either "meat" or "not meat" points in a representational sense - as a "versimilitude model", as it were - is more or less inevitably going to be unsatisfactory.

As far back as 1st edition AD&D, they have usually been treated as a sort of hybrid between the two:

A certain amount of these hit points represent the actual physical punishment which can be sustained. The remainder, a significant portion of hit points at higher levels, stands for skill, luck, and/or magical factors.

Treating this hybrid solution as being a representational feature still has its problems; at some point, then, you pretty much have to concede that to some extent or another hit points are an abstract game mechanic that just doesn't translate well into the imagination of the game world; but with that concession comes the acknowledgement that this is well and good, because this is a game.

It is not necessarily a bad thing, then, that hit points are an abstracted measure of fortitude.

[Strudel1000]

Some things to watch out for:
(1) Spellcasting is unaffected unless you have to make an attack roll or ability check as part of the spell. So, mysteriously, it gets harder to cast, say, dispel magic or firebolt, but not, say, sacred flame or charm person.

(2) Death spirals end up creating busywork all round - especially for player characters who might be incentivised to do more in-combat healing. Every time your hit points drop below a threshold, you have to apply an effect to your die rolls, then stop applying that effect if your hit points go back above the threshold, and so on and so forth. So there's definitely a table time and cognitive load cost to the death spiral. That is not to say that this is bad per se - if the enjoyment that the table gets from the death spiral mechanic outweighs these costs, then they are definitely worth it. But it is worth mentioning.
[/SPOILER]

I really appreciate this in depth analysis & critique! I had never heard the terms "death spiral" or "damage rider" before you and @Dienekes mentioned them, now that I know those terms I was able to do more research on similar mechanics.

Spellcasting not being affected is something I'm not sure how to address. Spells that require attack rolls or ability checks are affected, but not spells that cause a saving throw, or spells that don't directly affect a creature. The simplest way to deal with this would be to do nothing, because spells are already designed to use either an attack roll/saving throw for a reason, so I feel like this wouldn't be too far off from the design aesthetic of 5E.

One way to balance this would be to make the -2 penalty apply to only saving throws and ability checks, which would allow characters without spellcasting to make attack rolls without penalty, hopefully putting them on a more even playing field.

Another way would be to give creatures who are making a saving throw against a spell from a damaged creature a +2 bonus or advantage, to represent the caster's decreased casting ability.

Alternatively, starting at ¾ health, characters could have to make a CON check (DC 5) every time they cast a spell; the DC would increase by 5 for each tier of damage they reached (this would be temporarily negated by the adrenaline rush feature).

There's major downsides to each of those approaches, so clearly I have some more thinking/workshopping to do!

Re: the poison damage rider, poisoning is definitely powerful. I would say that at ½ HP, a character would roll ability checks with disadvantage, and at ¼ HP, they suffer the Poisoned condition.

In a bid to make this system simpler, and to not have to track multiple types of penalties, I made a grid:




Damage Type[v]/Damage Tier [>]
¾ of full HP
½ of full HP
¼ of full HP


Bludgeoning/Force/Thunder Damage
-2 to STR
-5 to STR
-10 to STR


Cold/Lightning/Necrotic Damage
-2 to DEX
-5 to DEX
-10 to DEX


Acid/Fire/Radiant Damage
-2 to CON
-5 to CON
-10 to CON


Piercing/Slashing Damage
In 1d12 turns, take ½ damage of original strike at the end of your turn.
In 1d6 turns, take ½ damage of original strike at the end of your turn.
In 1d6 turns, fall unconscious at the end of your turn.


Psychic Damage
-2 to INT/WIS/CHA
-5 to INT/WIS/CHA
-10 to INT/WIS/CHA


Poison Damage
-2 to attack rolls/ability checks
-5 to attack rolls/ability checks
-10 to attack rolls/ability checks



A few notes:
The damage that reduces the player below the tier in question is the one that has the effect. For example, if a character with 16HP is hit with a hammer for 5 damage (11HP), they suffer a -2 to STR. If they are then hit with a torch for 4 damage (7HP), they suffer a -5 to CON. If they take 3 points of psychic damage (4HP), they suffer a -10 to INT/WIS/CHA.
In the case of massive damage, the effects are not cumulative. Ie, if a 16HP character is bitten by a poisonous dire rat for 14 damage (2HP), they would suffer -10 to attack rolls/ability checks, not -17.
To mitigate the seriousness of piercing damage, I would rule that a character can use an action to "stop the bleeding," which would prevent further damage from bleeding out.

This system is a little simpler in terms of the numbers/effects to keep track of; however, I think it is also less forgiving and less nuanced.

[Zhorn]

If you are playing a physical game with these, I'd suggest having 'status cards' as handouts. While the modifiers are being kept simple, you still have a lot of them and (talking from experience on this one) players will forget what penalties are active at any given phase.
Keep em behind you screen with a cheat sheet on the players' HP thresholds, and hand out the card that applies to the player when the condition is inflicted.

[Breccia]

I'll just apologize for writing a response before reading the full thing -- I deleted it, but I still feel bad for assuming.

I've seen enough critical hit systems in my time to recognize this as similar enough to give this response: anything that makes combat more lethal is bad for the PCs.

The PCs are going to be smacked around over and over, and will be under 3/4 HP for a lot of critical moments. By contrast, each monster will drop in hit points, die, and their role in the story is over. The monster doesn't have a second fight to worry about.

The system you're describing is also what I've heard called the Animal Farm system: some hit points are more equal than others. PCs will have to make the decision to heal to full between fights -- or during fights -- because otherwise, even if there's no risk of death, they'll be suffering combat penalties and make all remaining challenges harder. While that doesn't sound bad at first, that means they're going to be tempted to use a lot of their healing early, have less left, and a tough fight will cause things to go downhill fast since the healers will have only their emergency reserve left.

Or, arguably worse, they'll call it a day sooner than normal rather than go into a fight without everyone at full hp. The players will choose less risk, stretching out campaigns and game sessions, and take long rests more often.

A realistic situation simply means the PCs are going to be constantly at greater risk, will be easier to kill when it matters, and will take more time after being injured to recover.

If that's what you want, then a gradually escalating system like yours is probably the safest way to do it.

If you're going to use such a system, I strongly recommend adding ways for players to reduce/negate it. Suggestions include:
1) Adrenaline: a PC may sacrifice a Hit Die and ignore injury effects for that round.
2) Rage pushes you down 1 step (Berserker 2 steps at level 10)
3) Clerics get a Pain Suppression spell, 3rd or 4th level
4) Protection fighting style's Reaction also causes you to ignore injury effects until your turn is over.
5) Warlocks get a spell in which they project their injury penalties onto a victim
6) And of course, a feat, consumable, or magic item.

[ARTHAN]

This is all to say that i disagree with the way you're going about this, treating each and every "Hit" on a character as a blow that draws blood, so to speak. It implies that the characters have no active defense and are constantly being stabbed, which is unrealistic and antithetical to your goal. If i were to make a suggestion, it would be to include some sort of active defense. Real fights with weapons tend to end in a single, decisive blow, with all other attacks being either dodged, parried, or merely a flesh wound or glancing blow. (Can you think of any movie fight where characters constantly stabbed each other, and continued fighting?)


So much of this!

Moreover, in general, I also would avoid complex fighting systems. Adding complexity without a good reason ruins the fun instead of helping it and, believe me, it doesn't make a more "realistic" simulation of real-life combat either (probably the most realistic combat in real life would be for everyone to be a 4th edition minion and die or fall unconscious with a single hit, lol).
If you ask me, keep the combat system of your edition. Keeping edition A and using combat system B may result to nasty surprises because there may be not a full "agreement" between the two if you know what I mean. After all, role playing will be the same, will it not?

[Lacco]

I like the suggestion about Riddle of Steel as well, because that's sort of the effect I wanted to go for; this system is designed to influence players to avoid combat/damage as much as possible. At the same time, I recognize that this is not ideal from a gameplay perspective, because half the fun of roleplaying is being able to leap into dangerous situations and not get hurt- this is fantasy after all, and no one wants a death spiral to happen to them!

The risk of character getting hurt is one of the things that makes RoS the game it is. The system is designed to make you work for your victories and choose your combats: after all, getting defeated by legendary swordsman is better than getting shanked in tavern brawl.

That said, RoS also provides players with possibility to increase their combat stats if the combat matters to the player/character (Spiritual Attributes) and even introduces a Luck mechanic which can negate a hit or significantly lower the damage. So most of the time it's not "one hit and you are dead" but "why am I fighting in this tavern brawl I did not even start when I should be avenging my dead father...?".

What RoS is good at is making the players care about combat more. It's not just fun now, it's complex, dangerous and each blow hurts badly. But it's still fun and the euphoria/catharsis you feel after each combat is great.

Actual advice: get a pdf of Trauma. The guys took a good look at the possibilities and the result is largely system-agnostic. It works similar to RoS (damage tables per body part) and could be mined for ideas.

[Strudel1000]

If you are playing a physical game with these, I'd suggest having 'status cards' as handouts.

This is crucial, I've made myself tokens just to keep track of whether I'm concentrating or not! Status cards would definitely be a feature of this system because of all the numbers/effects.


A realistic situation simply means the PCs are going to be constantly at greater risk, will be easier to kill when it matters, and will take more time after being injured to recover.

If that's what you want, then a gradually escalating system like yours is probably the safest way to do it.

This is an excellent point. Although I do want there to be more risk to the PCs, my goal with this homebrew is not to make successive damage completely debilitating or to start a death spiral. My goal is to make different types of damage feel a little more involved. 5e has many different types of damage, and I felt like a creature's reaction to that damage could be represented in a way that's more in depth than just weakness/resistance/immunity. Clearly, I have some adjustments to make so that it doesn't make combat boringly dangerous or dangerously boring!


If you're going to use such a system, I strongly recommend adding ways for players to reduce/negate it. Suggestions include:
1) Adrenaline: a PC may sacrifice a Hit Die and ignore injury effects for that round.
2) Rage pushes you down 1 step (Berserker 2 steps at level 10)
3) Clerics get a Pain Suppression spell, 3rd or 4th level
4) Protection fighting style's Reaction also causes you to ignore injury effects until your turn is over.
5) Warlocks get a spell in which they project their injury penalties onto a victim
6) And of course, a feat, consumable, or magic item.

I really appreciate these suggestions! The idea of an adrenaline system is definitely one that came to me, but I hadn't thought of any of these other ways of mitigating the dangerousness of damage.
I think that anything I introduce to reduce the disadvantages would be something that I give to all classes, for simplicity's sake. For example, I wrote a thing about a player being able to use an action to stop bleeding; I might say that a player can take an action to "steady themselves," which would take away the last penalty they received, no matter what it was.


Moreover, in general, I also would avoid complex fighting systems. Adding complexity without a good reason ruins the fun instead of helping it and, believe me, it doesn't make a more "realistic" simulation of real-life combat either (probably the most realistic combat in real life would be for everyone to be a 4th edition minion and die or fall unconscious with a single hit, lol).
If you ask me, keep the combat system of your edition. Keeping edition A and using combat system B may result to nasty surprises because there may be not a full "agreement" between the two if you know what I mean. After all, role playing will be the same, will it not?

I hear you, complexity =/= reality =/= fun. At the same time, even if it's only hypothetical, I still want to tweak the rules, just because I can ;)


What RoS is good at is making the players care about combat more. It's not just fun now, it's complex, dangerous and each blow hurts badly. But it's still fun and the euphoria/catharsis you feel after each combat is great.

Actual advice: get a pdf of Trauma. The guys took a good look at the possibilities and the result is largely system-agnostic. It works similar to RoS (damage tables per body part) and could be mined for ideas.

Finding online resources for RoS has been difficult, but based on what I was able to find it seems like it's exactly the kind of thing I was looking for! I've also been reading the RoS PBP you've been DM'ing, it seems like a lot of fun.

[aimlessPolymath]

An alternative wound system I've been working with for a homebrew system went in the direction of increasing defense, instead of reducing it.

When you take damage, you can choose to take a wound instead of taking that damage. If the damage was more than 1/2 your remaining health, you must take two wounds instead. When you have no hit points remaining, you must take wounds (and all hits will be more than your remaining health).

Each wound has a different type, and you can't take the same wound twice. The wound you take is dependent on the damage type; if you already have a wound of that type, you choose which one you take instead. If you already have all the kinds of wounds and take another, you go unconscious and begin dying.

There are 3-4 different kinds of wounds, depending on the system; each wound applies a penalty to a different subset of skills or abilities. For 5e, an example set might be something along these lines:
Weak: -2 to Str saves and checks, as well as damage rolls.
Slow: -2 to Dex saves and checks, and to AC.
Tired: -2 to Con saves and checks, and your speed is halved.
Confused: -2 to mental saves and checks, and take -2 to all save DCs and attack rolls.

Wounds require somewhat higher-level healing magic to remove (perhaps Lesser Restoration, but with an increased cast time?), and cannot be healed using HD during a short rest.

[Dienekes]

Finding online resources for RoS has been difficult, but based on what I was able to find it seems like it's exactly the kind of thing I was looking for! I've also been reading the RoS PBP you've been DM'ing, it seems like a lot of fun.

It certainly was.

[Strudel1000]

When you take damage, you can choose to take a wound instead of taking that damage. If the damage was more than 1/2 your remaining health, you must take two wounds instead. When you have no hit points remaining, you must take wounds.

Each wound has a different type, and you can't take the same wound twice. The wound you take is dependent on the damage type; if you already have a wound of that type, you choose which one you take instead. If you already have all the kinds of wounds and take another, you go unconscious and begin dying.

There are 3-4 different kinds of wounds, depending on the system; each wound applies a penalty to a different subset of skills or abilities. For 5e, an example set might be something along these lines:
Weak: -2 to Str saves and checks, as well as damage rolls.
Slow: -2 to Dex saves and checks, and to AC.
Tired: -2 to Con saves and checks, and your speed is halved.
Confused: -2 to mental saves and checks, and take -2 to all save DCs and attack rolls.

Wounds require somewhat higher-level healing magic to remove (perhaps Lesser Restoration, but with an increased cast time?), and cannot be healed using HD during a short rest.

Thank you for sharing this homebrew! It's simple, and it gets the point across. This is the best wound system for 5E I've seen so far. Would it be okay if I used this in a future campaign?

[aimlessPolymath]

Go ahead! The things I think are missing for a full 5e port (keep in mind, it was originally for a different system) are the following:
-Mapping the existing damage types to their "default" wound type.
-Defining how you can heal wounds- maybe you heal all of them during a long rest? Maybe just one? What spells work for this?
-Maybe Weak needs to scale with level/proficiency?
-Double-checking that there's no issues where enemies "just won't go down", especially for monsters- there might be some rules you need to include relating to damage that is higher than a character's remaining hit points. As a defensive system, I think it favors monsters compared to 5e's current paradigm; they get to block player's big nova attacks, and they tend to have lots of max health so they don't trigger the "more than 1/2 remaining health" rule very often.