Alternative Rules - Wounds and Vitality

This article was first published at the Canned Blog titled D&D: Fordeler med Vitality and Wounds-systemet.
I haven’t written everything that’s relevant for introducing the system in this post, only the most important points. If you’d like to read the whole ruleset, I recommend you drop by The d20 System Resource Document and read through its contents.

Health Points

Background and Advantages

Nothing makes a player more scared when playing role playing games than the idea of the character’s death. In many games there are ways of reawakening the character to life, but it commonly is very expensive, and unless the caster has access to the strongest magics, the character is punished with a lower level, less experience points and in general will have to struggle to get back to the level one was at before the accident happened.
But all these are good things! It keeps the player sharp and not to power hungry, overeager or intrepid. There are as many systems for representing health as there are role playing systems – maybe even more – and in D&D the Hit Points (or Health Points) system is what matters. The system has many advantages: It’s easy to keep track of the status of the character, the system is internally coherent, and with a quick look one can get an idea of the character’s welfare; a higher hit point total means you’re better at avoiding attacks, so that an attack one as a low-level character wouldn’t have the time to respond to and thus would hit and do maximum relative damage, would at the higher levels only be a glancing hit; and in addition it represents you being hardened, so that one in general can take more. Gary Gygax explained it like this in AD&D 1e DMG page 82:

“It is quite unreasonable to assume that as a character gains levels of ability in his or her class that a corresponding gain in actual ability to sustain physical damage takes place… Why then the increase in hit points? Because these reflect both the actual physical ability of the character to withstand damage—as indicated by constitution bonuses—and a commensurate increase in such areas as skill in combat and similar life-or-death situations… Each hit scored upon the character does only a small amount of actual physical harm—the sword thrust that would have run a 1^st level fighter through the heart merely grazes the character due to the fighter’s exceptional skill, luck, and sixth sense ability which caused movement to avoid the attack at just the right moment.”

Disadvantages with Health Points

Unfortunately, this system soon becomes very artificial. Critical hits are supposed to represent attacks hitting vital areas. The meaning of them are all in all gone, when it all in all basically has no effect on the character, other than the character losing a small fraction of its health.

The Vitality and Wounds System

Structure

This is where the Vitality and Wounds system enters. Ordinary damage works in the normal way, buy reducing one’s vitality—i.e. life force—total. This increases in the same way as normal HP, but the difference is in the speed; it’s regained as if it was non-lethal damage received, that is one point per level per hour; vitality—life force—is simply how much of a beating one can take. Actual damage, on the other hand, is harder to take. If you’re out of vitality points or your opponent gets a critical hit, this is deducted straight from your wound points. In other words: even if you have 150 HP, a sword cut to the throat is life threatening. The maximum number of wound points are always equal to the player’s constitution score (Con), so the game grows far more risky.
Due to the increased danger, all monsters with a fractional CR have their fraction increased by one step, so a monster with CR ½ is increased to CR 1, and a CR ⅓ becomes CR ½; in addition the largest monsters (G and C) are ajusted up a level. The players in other words get an adequate reward for the game being made harder. The other thing that needs adjusting now, is how critical damage works.
As mentioned, critical damage is applied straight to the wound points, and since they rarely are more than 18, a multiplication of the damage would have been lethal almost every single time. Therefore, damage multiplication of critical hits is removed, and weapons with a high multiplier instead gets an increased threat range. This can be listed like this:

• Multiplier ×2: threat range as previously.
• Multiplier ×3: threat range is increased to 19–20.
• Multiplier ×4: threat range is increased to 18–20.
• Multiplier ×5: threat range is increased to 17–20.

The threat range is in other words increased by one point for every multiplier point above 2×.

Healing

When a character is harmed and the threats keep waiting, one has to resort to magical healing. This works more or less like before, but with a few exceptions. If the magic gives an x number of dice + the caster’s level in health (e.g. Cure light wounds), the die roll heals vitality, while the caster level heals wounds. If the magic instead heals a fixed number of health points, such as Heal does, wounds are first healed, and then vitality.
When it comes to natural healing, it works like this: The character regains vitality at the rate of one point per character level per hour. This in other words works the same way as non-lethal damage in the regular system. Wounds, however, take a lot more time to heal, and are returned at the rate of one point per character level per day. If, however, one is cared for by someone else (another character throws the die to see if can give first aid and assist the healing process (Heal) against a DC of 15; this taking a full 24 hours) heals vitality and wounds at double the rate. You also get double the number of wound points back by sleeping and resting uninterrupted for 24 hours.
If, during the process of natural healing, one has any interruptions of consequence, such as being awakened by attacking monsters while resting/sleeping, not wound points are returned at all.

Death

Sooner or later the moment no players want for their characters comes: life threatening damage. One can never have less than 0 wound points. When the wound points equals 0, the player immediately throws a fortitude save with a DC of 15, and if it’s failed the character drops, unconscious and dying; if it’s a success, one is disabled. If it was failed, a fortitude save is thrown with a DC of 10 + 1 per round:

• If it’s failed, one dies;
• if it’s a success by <5, one’s condition is unchanged;
• if it’s a success by ≥5 but <10, one is stable, but still unconscious;
• if it’s a success by ≥10, one regains consciousness and is disabled.

Other players can make a dying character stable by giving first aid (Heal DC 15) as a standard action provoking attacks of opportunity.

Effects of Introducing the System

The players are, according to my experience, more attentive. The threats are continously more overhanging, so they’ll have to think more tactically and work together to reach their common goals. My experience after introducing the system, is an increased joy from playing, since the taste of success is that much sweeter.