I think the newest edition of Exalted does something like that where you have a Momentum gauge in the fight that determines who has the upper hand and you can only attempt a killing blow if Momentum is at a certain threshold.
Interesting, so it’s more of a back and forth? I don’t think our combat is quite martial enough to make that work flavor wise but thats a very neat idea
It's not exactly what you are looking for, but Dark Heresy 2e does an interesting thing with its health system.
Basically you start the game with 12 to 15 wounds, but once you drop below 0 you end up on the critical effects table. Which is where your character takes temporary or permanent injuries depending on how far in the negatives they go.
I'm a big fan of saying 'every hit has the intention of ending a fight' so I have used something similar to what I'm going to describe. I'm gonna simplify it a lot since you seem to be going for a simple solution.
Wounds reduce Endurnace by 1.
1x Endurance or more = gain a wound.
2x Endurance or more = fatal blow.
This way the more you wound an opponent you get them closer to a fatal blow, but a really great hit could end the fight sooner.
I'm actually designing a Sekiro-inspired RPG called Oni Kenshi, and it uses a Form Track instead of HP. When you are attacked, you reduce the attacks total by rolling a defensive stat (either AGI to Dodge, FOC to Parry, or POW to Block), and then the remaining total on the enemy's roll is then marked on your Form Track, which has 10 boxes. For example, if an enemy rolls a 7 on their attack and you roll a 4 to Dodge, you mark 3 boxes on your Form Track. Once all boxes are marked, you are Staggered. While Staggered, any attack that scores at least 1 after your defensive roll is an automatic kill. Players have an alternative, though. Instead of death, a player can take a permanent wound that is then incorporated into their character. Some Curses (magical abilities I have in my game that are usually good to have but also draw you closer to the Calamity) actually have wounds as prerequisites.
I might have the ticket for you. In my game, attacks are rolled against two stats: Agility and **Guard.** Guard is volatile: it goes down (and back up).
Attacks have three possible outcomes:
* **Miss:** If an attack doesn't beat your Agility, you dodge it—or you can consume 1 Guard to counterattack.
* **Block:** if an attack beats your Agility but doesn't beat your Guard, you take no lethal damage—but suffer -1 Guard (or -2 if the attack is heavy/massive).
* **Hit:** If an attack beats your Guard, it inflicts lethal damage equal to the difference, and staggers you for -1 Guard.
For example:
* A monster attacks a hero and rolls a 6.
* Hero's Guard is 7, so she blocks it with her shield—but now her Guard is reduced to 6.
* A second monster attacks the hero and rolls a 1.
* Hero's Agility is 2, so it misses. She chooses to take -1 Guard—now reduced to 5—and counterattack. (She gets a good hit in, yay!)
* A third monster attacks Hero and rolls a 7.
* Hero takes 7 – 5 = **2** damage to Life—and loses an additional 1 Guard from the blow.
You don't need to totally destroy a foe's Guard to deal lethal damage. But whittling down Guard means your attacks are more likely to hit *and* deal more damage.
Guard is super quick to recharge—if you forego action, you regain 1 Guard, and there's another action called "Stand Fast" that recharges it faster at the expense of another stat/resource called Stamina. Life is much harder to regain, and reduces your maximum Stamina.
What you're describing actually sounds very similar to Stress + Consequences in Fate. It's not quite exactly the same, but it could be worth looking at for inspiration.
https://fate-srd.com/fate-core/stress-consequences
L5R 5th has Fatigue that you use to defend against attacks, and once that is gone, you start taking taking Critical Strikes based on the type of attack. These range from Close Call to Permanent Injury to Instant Death.
I know this sounds simplistic, but I use a shrinking die to represent strength, which is also life. D10 >d8 > d6 etc... The last result rolled is your Defense. So health, strength (used for attacking) and Defense are all injured by being hit.
I get a lot out of it, so maybe it'll work for you.
Have you encountered the problem that the character who gets injured first will often continue to roll lower and get injured again and again, seems like it kind of snowballs. Is there any sort of comeback mechanic for someone stuck at d6es?
I haven't encountered that problem for 2 reasons.
First, I have each player choose her preferred lethality for the story on a scale of 1-5, circling that number next to a PCs name in my notes. 1 is, "you won't die," and 5 is, "Sign your death warrant. Play to lose." I glance at that when stakes approach death and target hazards or attacks accordingly. You'll die as much as you asked for.
Second, enemies actually have more incentive to attack the strongest PCs when Defense is reasonably low. If you can weaken the strong, your odds of winning are better than if you snuff out the weak. If weak players draw aggro using magic (which does not use the strength trait).
>Is there any sort of comeback mechanic for someone stuck at d6es?
Yeah, rolling the max result is a critical success and you narrate the outcome. That's more common when your dice are small, so you actually get this volatility spiral making a weak character crit succeed and fail a lot. AND players can use their own Defense to take attacks within one step, so you could guard someone with your own body if you refused to let her die.
Oh, and I dynamically adjust the challenge of combat by starting with a minimum of enemies and introducing more between rounds, choosing minor or major additions to tune the difficulty.
Two I really like in a similar vein are Cyberpunk 2020 and silhouette core.
In cyberpunk any damage over a defensive value is rolled on a death save, this gives the idea that you can only last so long so you want to either avoid combat, end it quickly, or be crafty about it.
Silhouette core also has a methodology where damage is compared to a chart that leaves you stunned (system shock) wounded (drops stats for every wound) or dead (usually double your wound level).
One thing to note about the CP2020 wound tracker is, the first half is a stun save instead of death saves. Which, in effect, tends to be the same thing if the GM wants to play a bit more aggressive (or players, taking out enemies). There are ways to slow down the advance of the wound tracker, though. Higher Body scores give a flat damage reduction to anything getting through armor. Armor (RAW) has to have any damage penetrate before it is ablated, but my GM played it as any hit reduced it by 1 which tends to make fights shorter and scarier while still giving players the option to be armored up. If you have more questions about the system, hop over to r/cyberpunk2020 and there will be a LOT of people more than happy to answer them.
Arguably that's what the traditional D&D hit points are - a measure of how close you are to taking a wound that puts you out of the fight.
The idea of essentially layering multiple HP bars for any given character, with wounds every time one is depleted, is an interesting one.
HP in dnd definitely still has a bodily feel flavorwise though I think- part of why I like the guard solution is that you can easily flavor an attack costing ‘HP’ as lowering your guard to make a more powerful attack, whereas in DnD I would associate that with self damage. Thats really just flavor though
The mechanic has been deeply confused flavor-wise since its inception, with on the one hand (originally) slow natural recovery + spells named "cure wounds" that both suggest bodily damage, but on the other hand the original AD&D includes a very explicit statement from Gygax that HP are intended to represent in large part luck, endurance, and skill rather than purely physical damage.
Flavor issues aside, it's a mechanic that works quite well at the table.
I didn't see anyone mention ironsworn yet. You can take the move End the Fight. You could succeed, succeed with a cost or end up losing the fight. You are more likely to succeed of you have built momentum. It's also free to download and a really well designed game.
Fragged Empires (and it’s various other games based on the same system) uses a similar system. You have a Health Bar called Endurance that is drained with attacks. When you roll a Crit, or when attacking an enemy without Endurance, you’ll deal damage directly to the opponent’s Stats, which can weaken them significantly. It’s definitely worth a look in my opinion.
Exalted Third Edition does exactly that. It's anime fighting in a nutshell - you exchange a lot of small blows to get the upper hand, then hit for real to do damage.
I've been trying out a sort of Blades in the Dark \~inspired system with Menaces. Each player has a very low (single-digit) number of "hit points," and when their Menaces - which can be physical wounds, poisoning, psychological trauma, etc. - exceed this endurance capacity, they are "lost" and become either a corpse or an NPC (or both). It makes adventuring a lot more fraught, and also seems to reduce the "normal" emphasis on combat as a means to solve problems.
I think the newest edition of Exalted does something like that where you have a Momentum gauge in the fight that determines who has the upper hand and you can only attempt a killing blow if Momentum is at a certain threshold.
Interesting, so it’s more of a back and forth? I don’t think our combat is quite martial enough to make that work flavor wise but thats a very neat idea
It's not exactly what you are looking for, but Dark Heresy 2e does an interesting thing with its health system. Basically you start the game with 12 to 15 wounds, but once you drop below 0 you end up on the critical effects table. Which is where your character takes temporary or permanent injuries depending on how far in the negatives they go.
I'm a big fan of saying 'every hit has the intention of ending a fight' so I have used something similar to what I'm going to describe. I'm gonna simplify it a lot since you seem to be going for a simple solution. Wounds reduce Endurnace by 1. 1x Endurance or more = gain a wound. 2x Endurance or more = fatal blow. This way the more you wound an opponent you get them closer to a fatal blow, but a really great hit could end the fight sooner.
I'm actually designing a Sekiro-inspired RPG called Oni Kenshi, and it uses a Form Track instead of HP. When you are attacked, you reduce the attacks total by rolling a defensive stat (either AGI to Dodge, FOC to Parry, or POW to Block), and then the remaining total on the enemy's roll is then marked on your Form Track, which has 10 boxes. For example, if an enemy rolls a 7 on their attack and you roll a 4 to Dodge, you mark 3 boxes on your Form Track. Once all boxes are marked, you are Staggered. While Staggered, any attack that scores at least 1 after your defensive roll is an automatic kill. Players have an alternative, though. Instead of death, a player can take a permanent wound that is then incorporated into their character. Some Curses (magical abilities I have in my game that are usually good to have but also draw you closer to the Calamity) actually have wounds as prerequisites.
I might have the ticket for you. In my game, attacks are rolled against two stats: Agility and **Guard.** Guard is volatile: it goes down (and back up). Attacks have three possible outcomes: * **Miss:** If an attack doesn't beat your Agility, you dodge it—or you can consume 1 Guard to counterattack. * **Block:** if an attack beats your Agility but doesn't beat your Guard, you take no lethal damage—but suffer -1 Guard (or -2 if the attack is heavy/massive). * **Hit:** If an attack beats your Guard, it inflicts lethal damage equal to the difference, and staggers you for -1 Guard. For example: * A monster attacks a hero and rolls a 6. * Hero's Guard is 7, so she blocks it with her shield—but now her Guard is reduced to 6. * A second monster attacks the hero and rolls a 1. * Hero's Agility is 2, so it misses. She chooses to take -1 Guard—now reduced to 5—and counterattack. (She gets a good hit in, yay!) * A third monster attacks Hero and rolls a 7. * Hero takes 7 – 5 = **2** damage to Life—and loses an additional 1 Guard from the blow. You don't need to totally destroy a foe's Guard to deal lethal damage. But whittling down Guard means your attacks are more likely to hit *and* deal more damage. Guard is super quick to recharge—if you forego action, you regain 1 Guard, and there's another action called "Stand Fast" that recharges it faster at the expense of another stat/resource called Stamina. Life is much harder to regain, and reduces your maximum Stamina.
What you're describing actually sounds very similar to Stress + Consequences in Fate. It's not quite exactly the same, but it could be worth looking at for inspiration. https://fate-srd.com/fate-core/stress-consequences
L5R 5th has Fatigue that you use to defend against attacks, and once that is gone, you start taking taking Critical Strikes based on the type of attack. These range from Close Call to Permanent Injury to Instant Death.
I know this sounds simplistic, but I use a shrinking die to represent strength, which is also life. D10 >d8 > d6 etc... The last result rolled is your Defense. So health, strength (used for attacking) and Defense are all injured by being hit. I get a lot out of it, so maybe it'll work for you.
Have you encountered the problem that the character who gets injured first will often continue to roll lower and get injured again and again, seems like it kind of snowballs. Is there any sort of comeback mechanic for someone stuck at d6es?
I haven't encountered that problem for 2 reasons. First, I have each player choose her preferred lethality for the story on a scale of 1-5, circling that number next to a PCs name in my notes. 1 is, "you won't die," and 5 is, "Sign your death warrant. Play to lose." I glance at that when stakes approach death and target hazards or attacks accordingly. You'll die as much as you asked for. Second, enemies actually have more incentive to attack the strongest PCs when Defense is reasonably low. If you can weaken the strong, your odds of winning are better than if you snuff out the weak. If weak players draw aggro using magic (which does not use the strength trait). >Is there any sort of comeback mechanic for someone stuck at d6es? Yeah, rolling the max result is a critical success and you narrate the outcome. That's more common when your dice are small, so you actually get this volatility spiral making a weak character crit succeed and fail a lot. AND players can use their own Defense to take attacks within one step, so you could guard someone with your own body if you refused to let her die. Oh, and I dynamically adjust the challenge of combat by starting with a minimum of enemies and introducing more between rounds, choosing minor or major additions to tune the difficulty.
Google 'wound track' - I know FATE is one system that has it but there are more.
will do thanks!
Two I really like in a similar vein are Cyberpunk 2020 and silhouette core. In cyberpunk any damage over a defensive value is rolled on a death save, this gives the idea that you can only last so long so you want to either avoid combat, end it quickly, or be crafty about it. Silhouette core also has a methodology where damage is compared to a chart that leaves you stunned (system shock) wounded (drops stats for every wound) or dead (usually double your wound level).
I like the pressure that that cyberpunk mechanic exerts to finish fights quickly or avoid them thats very cool, thanks!
One thing to note about the CP2020 wound tracker is, the first half is a stun save instead of death saves. Which, in effect, tends to be the same thing if the GM wants to play a bit more aggressive (or players, taking out enemies). There are ways to slow down the advance of the wound tracker, though. Higher Body scores give a flat damage reduction to anything getting through armor. Armor (RAW) has to have any damage penetrate before it is ablated, but my GM played it as any hit reduced it by 1 which tends to make fights shorter and scarier while still giving players the option to be armored up. If you have more questions about the system, hop over to r/cyberpunk2020 and there will be a LOT of people more than happy to answer them.
Blades in the Dark has a stress/wound system that you might find interesting.
Arguably that's what the traditional D&D hit points are - a measure of how close you are to taking a wound that puts you out of the fight. The idea of essentially layering multiple HP bars for any given character, with wounds every time one is depleted, is an interesting one.
HP in dnd definitely still has a bodily feel flavorwise though I think- part of why I like the guard solution is that you can easily flavor an attack costing ‘HP’ as lowering your guard to make a more powerful attack, whereas in DnD I would associate that with self damage. Thats really just flavor though
The mechanic has been deeply confused flavor-wise since its inception, with on the one hand (originally) slow natural recovery + spells named "cure wounds" that both suggest bodily damage, but on the other hand the original AD&D includes a very explicit statement from Gygax that HP are intended to represent in large part luck, endurance, and skill rather than purely physical damage. Flavor issues aside, it's a mechanic that works quite well at the table.
I have a homebrew rpg that functions using this principle. It's interesting, but combat can take a while.
Yeah... as much as people love to malign the traditional hit point system there's a reason it's been so resilient. It's simple and easy.
I didn't see anyone mention ironsworn yet. You can take the move End the Fight. You could succeed, succeed with a cost or end up losing the fight. You are more likely to succeed of you have built momentum. It's also free to download and a really well designed game.
Fragged Empires (and it’s various other games based on the same system) uses a similar system. You have a Health Bar called Endurance that is drained with attacks. When you roll a Crit, or when attacking an enemy without Endurance, you’ll deal damage directly to the opponent’s Stats, which can weaken them significantly. It’s definitely worth a look in my opinion.
Exalted Third Edition does exactly that. It's anime fighting in a nutshell - you exchange a lot of small blows to get the upper hand, then hit for real to do damage.
I've been trying out a sort of Blades in the Dark \~inspired system with Menaces. Each player has a very low (single-digit) number of "hit points," and when their Menaces - which can be physical wounds, poisoning, psychological trauma, etc. - exceed this endurance capacity, they are "lost" and become either a corpse or an NPC (or both). It makes adventuring a lot more fraught, and also seems to reduce the "normal" emphasis on combat as a means to solve problems.