Damage as Wounds, not Hit Points

Now up until now in this blog I've given rules /suggestions which may be used in many games: stat generation, height and weights, open dice, initiative, mapping dungeons, and sizing things up. These rules may be used piecemeal and are easy to try out. Today's rule is a departure from this as it's a fairly major game changer; you can't drop this rule into the middle of an ongoing campaign!

After playing D&D for a couple of years as a family our first campaign came to an end, and we turned to Star Frontiers and Marvel Super Heroes for a change of scene. As we were already playing a heavily house ruled game I asked if there were any rules that the players wanted changing for the next D&D campaign. My eldest son said that he didn't like having lots of hit points at high level - he wanted there to always be a chance that a sword hit could kill you - and he didn't like armour reducing the chance to hit.

The system described below is the end result, and we've been using it for the last nine months. It aims to be simple, short, and fast; scalable for larger monsters and higher level PCs; keep the lethality of Old School play but not be so lethal that you can never progress.

Parry / Attack / Kill / Wounds
Everyone has three main fighting stats - Parry (the number needed to hit you), Attack (the bonus on your attack roll), and Kill (the bonus on your kill roll).

When you are hit you can suffer a Minor (W1), Moderate (W2), Major (W3), or Severe (W4) wound, or Incapacitation.
You have thresholds for these different types of wounds. Your armour adds on to each threshold.

For example, here are the values for a character with Incap 14, Armour 5:

SURVIVAL	W1	W2	W3	W4	INCAP
BASE	2	5	8	11	14
ARMOURED	7	10	13	16	19

For short we can write for example:
Sword+Shield: P15/A5/K4;
7/10/13/16 (19);
Mail & Steel Cap:5

Attack Roll
Attack rolls are pretty standard. You roll a 2d10 (open) attack roll, adding an attack bonus, and need to match the defender's parry.
Note that parry includes your shield, but does not include armour.

Kill Roll
When you hit something, you make a 2d10 (open) "Kill" roll, adding your Kill bonus, and see how wounded your opponent is.

Note that you always roll the same dice for every attack, even a dragon. Dragons just get a BIG kill bonus.

Tracking Wounds
You track the total amount of wounds, not individual wounds. For example if you have a minor (W1) wound followed by a severe (W4) wound, then you are wounded 5.

We track these wound values during combat by putting a red d6 against wounded PCs and a green d6 against wounded Monsters (on account of me having boxes of small red & green d6!). If anyone's wounded by more than 6... you find a bigger dice.

You only need to make a note of the final wound values at the end of the combat.

Effect of Wounds
The effect of a wound is to give your opponents a bonus on both their attack roll and their kill roll.

Wounds themselves never kill you, they make it easier for someone to incapacitate you.
By using dice to record wounds, you don't have to ask what the bonus is, since you can see it.
Being wounded does not affect how dangerous your attacks are, it just makes your opponent more likely to hit you, and more likely to kill you if they do hit you.
Hence being wounded moves the combat towards a conclusion, but it is never a foregone conclusion, there is no "death spiral".

Note that wounds are relative to the creature - a W3 is as bad for a dragon as a W3 is for a giant rat. W4 is the worst possible wound from a single attack in either case.

Consequences
No fight is a foregone conclusion: although a high level fighter is much, much better than a first level fighter just starting out, a lucky hit from that first level fighter might win the fight in the first round, so don't get complacent!
When you are hit, all your opponents get a bonus on to hit and to kill. Even being wounded 1 has an effect.
One consequence we've found is that a high level party meeting a bunch of Orcs becomes a much more meaningful encounter.