Wounds and Vigor
This is a system designed to modify the abstraction of “hit points.” It puts greater emphasis on the difference between near misses or dodges and bodily wounds or injuries. Most of the content within this document is meant to inspire a narrative change, but with a handful of mechanical changes to better enable this. These rules are primarily meant for player characters, but could just as easily be used for bosses without too much mechanical overhead.
When describing a loss of hit points in standard play, a Game Master may describe a goblin as aggressively stabbing the valiant knight or a fireball searing the skin of the intrepid rogue. After prolonged combat, this narrative description can grow to cause cognitive dissonance and increase how “video gamey” an RPG session can feel.
How many of these life-threatening wounds could even a hero possibly withstand? On top of that, if health potions and healing magic are an acceptable cure-all, then why would there be any other forms of medical practice in the world? Trying to answer these questions can cause an increasing creep of “ifs” and “whys” which can draw the more narratively focused out of the game. This system is intended to be an answer to that.
Vigor
In this system, Vigor serves as a replacement for the abstraction of player hit points. For all intents and purposes, it is mechanically exactly the same as hit points - calculated, gained and lost in all the same ways. Where it differs is how it is used as a narrative tool, and what happens when a player character reaches 0.
Rather than describing a loss of hit points as overt physical harm, you can describe the loss of the knight’s hit points as “You catch the goblin’s dagger with your shield, but the effort has worn you down” or for the rogue “You narrowly dodge the fireball, but are seared by the heat and winded by twisting out of the way.” You could also describe potions and healing magic as restoring a hero’s wellspring of stamina, and perhaps healing minor burns or bruises.
This is a narrative difference that Vigor points are meant to encourage. However, if you were to take this concept and simply apply it to hit points, it would be hard to know where to draw the line between a character avoiding harm and actually taking an injury. This is where the largest mechanical shift of this system comes into play.
Wounds
Wounds are less of an abstraction than Vigor, and represent the actual physical condition of a player character. Each player character has a number of Wound Points, calculated as follows:
Wound Points
Wound points offer a mechanical change to the default hit points mechanics, and have actual drawbacks to being lost. A player character loses one Wound Point when they are reduced to 0 Vigor, when they suffer a Critical Hit, or when they suffer any damage while at 0 Vigor. Keep in mind that Death Saves are still in place, so, while it's unlikely that a player character will actually die from reaching 0 Wound Points, they can still die very quickly once unconscious.
This system sets the line between near misses and actual bodily harm. Were the aforementioned knight to suffer a critical hit from that goblin, you might describe it instead as “The goblin’s blade strikes true, driving between plates of armor and drawing blood” or, were that same rogue to be at 0 Vigor when that fireball hits, you could say “You’re too worn out to move out of the way, charred by the blast in an unfortunate end.”
At this point, the difference is still mostly a narrative tool; the further mechanical differences lie in how to determine if a player character falls unconscious, as well as the penalties for losing Wound Points.
Falling Unconscious
When a player character falls to 0 Vigor, and at the start of each turn while they have 0 Vigor, they must make a Constitution Save, calculated as follows, or fall unconscious:
Constitution Save DC
If they fail this save, they may spend their Inspiration to succeed instead. What this means is that the more Wound Points a player character has lost, the harder it is for them to stay on their feet.
The Effects of Wound Damage
Taking physical wounds takes a toll on the body. To represent this, there is a relationship between wound damage and levels of exhaustion. In this system, if a player character is either reduced to 0 Vigor or missing any Wound Points, they gain a “Minimum Exhaustion Level” that correlates to their remaining Wound Points. Just how detrimental this is varies greatly depending on the amount of Wound Points a player character has.
| Current Wound Points | Minimum Exhaustion Level | Minimum Exhaustion Effects |
|---|---|---|
| 6+ | 0 | None |
| 5 | 1 | Disadvantage on Ability Checks |
| 4 | 2 | Speed Halved |
| 3 | 3 | Disadvantage on Attack rolls and Saving Throws |
| 2 | 4 | Vigor maximum halved |
| 1 | 5 | Speed reduced to 0 |
| 0 | 6 | Death |
Regaining Wound Points
Wound Points are not affected by standard healing, and can only be regained by taking an Extended Rest of one week. At the end of an Extended Rest, a creature regains 1 Wound Point and thereby reduces their Minimum Exhaustion Level accordingly. Wound Points are not regained through any other sort of healing, either magical or mundane.
Wound damage should be severe, so recovery should also be described as such. Bed rest and medical care are the intended result of Wounds
Minimum Exhaustion
Minimum Exhaustion is a slight alteration to the existing Exhaustion mechanic. In simple terms, it is the floor from which other Exhaustion calculations are made. The standard system functionally uses 0 as its Minimum Exhaustion, while this system can change it. Additionally, Minimum Exhaustion cannot be changed by effects that change Exhaustion level, though it can be ignored.
Nightshade has taken some Wound Damage, leaving her with 4 wound points. This sets her minimum exhaustion to 2. Unfortunately, she had already taken 1 level of exhaustion, which is now calculated from the new minimum to come to a total of 3 levels of Exhaustion
Lower Maximum Wounds
If, for whatever reason, a creature’s Wound Point maximum is less than 6, that creature does not suffer from a Minimum Exhaustion Level unless they have either 0 Vigor or fewer than their maximum Wound Points.
Tandrin, a sickly Wizard, has a Constitution modifier of -2, this puts his Maximum Wound Points at 4, which would normally mean his Minimum Exhaustion is 2. However, because he has Vigor Points remaining, and is at full Wound Points, he suffers no ill effects from his current Wound Point total
Credits
Created by u/RecursiveDenizen and u/TeamDemonzone
Image by ehecod
Watercolor Stain Transition by Jared Ondricek
