Blood Draining Core Ability Mechanic Idea... [PEACH]

[TechnOkami]

...so I was thinking of making a base class which revolved around blood, the draining of blood, and using of blood as its main ability.

What I was thinking of was something along the lines of this:

Whenever you deal damage with a melee weapon you are healed a number of hit points equal to the damage dealt. If this healing would take you beyond your maximum hit point total, the unused healing is converted into temporary hit points.

-Thank you Jota for the simplified version

...so I think this sounds pretty overpowered off the bat, but what you're not seeing is the several dozen abilities that are fed off of your hit points. The ability will drain from the temporary hit point pool first, and drain from your normal hit points if needed to complete the ability.

I've only lightly dabbled in the art of homebrewing, so I honestly have no idea if this is too powerful or not...

...thoughts?

[Glimbur]

The ability to heal while dealing damage can be pretty useful (see the Crusader) but it really depends on how much damage can be done per round. It's possible you will end up putting a divisor in your formula i.e. for every two points of damage done the character gains one temp hp/point of healing.

Other important questions to consider are how long the pool stays full: mules are cheap and they have hit points, so if the pool lasts for ten minutes/level then by mid levels the character can start every fight with a full pool. Consider also the odds of the character doing damage: touch attacks are much easier to land, in general. Will the abilities that cost hp to use also restore hp if successful?

That's my two cents, anyway.

[Jota]

I think it could perhaps be better worded as:

Whenever you deal damage with a melee weapon you are healed a number of hit points equal to the damage dealt. If this healing would take you beyond your maximum hit point total, the unused healing is converted into temporary hit points.

Seems simpler, should still cover all bases. Some of what you mention doesn't seem strictly necessary since temporary hit points are almost always lost first, but it's obviously your call to make.

[Jarian]

The Hemolurgist may be able to provide inspiration for you. While the first thing that springs to mind is hitpoints, there are a lot of other things you can do with blood. I'm also of the mind that balancing out massive intake of hitpoints with massive outflowing of hitpoints is a slightly flawed concept - what happens if you can't drain for some reason? Are you left standing there hitting with a stick because you don't want to kill yourself by using your abilities?

And on the flipside, if you don't use your abilities, healing equal to damage dealt can get really silly, really fast. It may be better all around to have less healing, but less cost for the abilities too.

Edit: Removed repeat posts due to server error.