D&D seems to me to be about resource management - and hit points are just another resource to manage. Do I have enough to get through another encounter? If not, am I in a safe place to rest? If not... how do I manage my resources?
So here's my proposal for hit points (almost certainly not original of course - but I haven't seen it exactly like this anywhere).
NOTE that this is, of course, an untested work in progress :)
Health, Hit Points, Damage and Recovery
Health Points at 0 Level - all characters roll 1d8 for Life Points, Creatures have their Hit Dice in Life Points
Hit Points are rolled at each successive level according to class and added to the Hit Point Total, as normal. Hit Points represent exhaustion, tenacity, skill, survival instinct, and the blessing (or not!) of the fates and are easily lost and fairly quickly recovered.
Damage in combat and adventuring (with some few exceptions, see below) reduces Hit Points until they are exhausted, then Life Points are reduced accordingly. Additionally, once Hit Points are exhausted, Life Points are drained normally (that is, a 0 level human, or a levelled character who has 0 Hit Points remaining, who is hit for 5 points loses those 5 Life Points) and each point is a wound or scar (see below).
Each time a character takes 10 or more hit points in damage in a single round, regardless of how many total Hit Points the character has, his or her Life Points are reduced, one Life Point per 10 Hit Points of damage, rounded down (1 Life Point for 10-19 Hit Points, 2 Life for 20-29 Hit Points, etc.) with a subsequent Wound or Scar (see below).
Hit Points are recovered with Rest, while Life Points with Recuperation.
Rest: for every 10 minutes of rest, recover one Hit Dice of Hit Points.
Recuperation: for every 2 hours of recuperation, recover all Hit Points and 1 Life Point.
On Death, Dying and Dismemberment
Characters reduced to 0 Life Points are Dying. Dying Characters make a death save every round. A Death Save is a d20 rolled against the PC’s Constitution score, adjusted by his or her Constitution bonus. Two successive failed Death saves and the Character is dead. If a Dying Character is tended to by another Character (or NPC), the Death Save is rolled at Advantage.
Wounds and Scars: When a Life Point is lost, the Character receives a wound or scar appropriate to the situation. Roll on the general wounds and scars table below, adjusted by the number of Health Points lost in a single round and the Character’s Constitution Bonus (adding the Life Points lost, subtracting the Constitution Bonus).
Roll 1d12 | Effect |
1 or less | a surge of adrenaline returns 1d4 hit points per every other level (1d4 at 1st and 2nd, 2d4 at 3rd and 4th, etc.) At the end of the combat, the adrenaline drains away, hit points are reduced to zero, and the PC faints for 2d6 rounds. |
2 | No Effect |
| 3-4 | Minor Scar. It’s just a flesh wound, really. A little blood, a little pain but no lasting effect except a little scar (as determined by player and DM) |
5-6 | Major Scar. Out of action for remainder of combat and heal at half rate for 24 hours. Permanent scar (as determined by player and DM) |
7 | knocked down, disadvantage on rolls next round |
8 | knocked out for 2d6 rounds, unless wearing a helm. With helm, only stunned for 1 round. Disadvantage for 1d12 subsequent hours |
9 | broken bone (DM's choice), 2d4+9 weeks to heal. |
10 | severed limb (DM's choice or roll randomly) will die in 3d6 rounds unless tourniquet applied, wound cauterized with fire, or Cure Serious Wounds cast (CSW used for this will not restore lost hp). |
11 | fatal wound (gutted, stabbed through lung, broken back, etc.) die in 1d6 turns. |
12+ | instant death (decapitated or other grievous wound). |
NOTE: While death is generally final, there are some rituals of the Church of the Holy Saints that can potentially resurrect a dead Character. In addition, the clerics of the old gods (Druids) can employ spells like Reincarnation to keep a Character’s Soul from traveling to the great beyond and magic users are able to trap souls in the Mortal Realm (in decaying bodies or as disembodied spirits).
Back in the day... I bought ever issue of Dungeon Magazine I could get my hands on - starting with issue #9. I poured over those issues, reading and rereading the adventures.
One of the early adventures that has stuck in memory for all these decades is from issue #11 - Wards of the Witching Ways.
It's a tournament adventure - and as such, it's an okay plot...
But what I kept coming back to was the maps - the layout of the castle: Cragrapid Keep. It has four levels, multiple entrances and many interesting connections.
I was reading Grognardia's random roll on the Fiend Folio this morning and I remembered that someone had put together a PDF of all the Fiend Factory monsters from White Dwarf. I found a copy of it a long time ago. It's just image scanned copies of the pages - meaning the layout is... um... variable as is the quality at times. I thought about trying to do some layout work and minor editing... but that's a deeper dive time-wise than I wanted to undertake.
But I thought a cover would be nice :)
So I grabbed an image of a White Dwarf cover I liked (#26) and did some quick edits to make it a Fiend Factory Cover. Why? Because I could...
I'm always looking for new maps so I started drawing some. They're pretty rough - but they're free!
Available for use in any way, including commercially, with attribution:
Map by WR Beatty
If you want a larger image or a different format or just to tell me you used the map:
daenralworld AT gmail
I'm always looking for new maps so I started drawing some. They're pretty rough - but they're free!
Part three of at least three. This is the right section.
Here's how they all fit together.
Available for use in any way, including commercially, with attribution:
Map by WR Beatty
If you want a larger image or a different format or just to tell me you used the map:
daenralworld AT gmail
Art in adventures is useful for any number of reasons. I use art as reference: both visually ("oh, THAT'S what a Murrful Monster looks like!") and as a kind of shorthand bookmark in the adventure ("I know the Trash Beast encounter is after the four-armed Minotaur - that image is on page...17..."). Sometimes art really helps fill out the layout of the page. A good header or page border can make an adventure stand out in my mind - I'm thinking particularly of some of the old D&D adventures written in the UK - UK 5-7, B10, O2.
Mostly what I want from art is that it be evocative. I was leafing through The Gates of Firestorm Peak this morning. I've never played it - I didn't buy it back in the day. By the time it was published I was starting to get overwhelmed by the number of products TSR was putting out and I had discovered Magic: The Gathering (or, as my friend Jim used to call it, "Magic the Moneypit"). We weren't playing much D&D anymore anyway.
But I was looking through it today and several things about the art struck me:
First, the negative. I HATE watermark art on the page. There was a time when I thought it was kind of cool - but now I just find it distracting. It makes the pages just a bit harder to read - and heaven forbid you put italics over a watermark - my old eyes just aren't up to the struggle...
Second, the meh. Headers. I had forgotten how en vogue it became in second edition to use headers and page borders. The thing is, they aren't effective AT ALL. What the UK modules of the past did was a different header for each section (again, kind of a bookmark for where you are in the adventure) and had style. These are just the same two images repeated ad nauseum... I wouldn't mind if it wasn't just kind of page filler - add six more lines of text to each column, please... |
| Where is this? |
Finally, the evocative! I like a lot of the art in this adventure - it really helps set the mood for me. "Giants" staring over a gate, huge skeletons, weird tentacled things and mutated trolls. Good stuff. In the "really helping me get it" mode, there's a creepy fountain and a crystal room with a bizarre hanging quicksilver pool (which I totally didn't understand until I saw the pic) - heck even the myconid image is evocative (huddled in a group but, to me, still defiant and aloof...).
Here's a couple images (full pagers) that help sell the scenes for me - where a picture really does say a thousand words:
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