TL:DR version - Health is divided into two pools: Endurance and Hit Points. Endurance can be healed and restored easily and is thus expendable. Hit Points cannot be easily healed/restored and is thus much less expendable. Roll Death Saves immediately when hitting 0HP. Failed Death saves (roll 5 or less on d20) result in immediate death.
Goal is to encourage players to play more sensibly with their PCs and not wait til the 2 death save before moving in to stabilize a PC.
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Premise
So I've been reading Angry GM again. What else is new? Or old, as it were. In one of his old articles he laments about the HP system. Mostly about players not recognizing their characters are in serious trouble and doing something about it in spite of their HP dropping:
But I’ve reached a point now where all of these petty little annoyances – kill-or-be-killed, offense only, always bring a healer, ignore the downed character for two rounds, dropping characters every other fight at low- to mid-levels – all of those little niggling annoyances are starting to bug me. And I’m looking squarely at the HP system and saying “this is all your fault. Where the f$&% did you go wrong?” Because, to be honest, I HATE the HP system in D&D....
...The game was designed with this state called dying. And the whole point is that the game recognizes when you are in an emergency situation. And it jumps in to rescue you. It removes you as a target by taking you out of the fight so you hopefully won’t take any more damage. And it also takes away your ability to get yourself back into the fight and further endanger yourself until you’re no longer in an emergency state. And those are two very good ideas. I support those very highly.
...But it also makes you unconscious. It renders you unable to act. And that means, there’s nothing YOU can personally do to get out of the emergency state. I agree with the idea of pulling you back from the fight and sending you to your corner, but I don’t understand why it also has to break your legs so you can’t get back to your corner.
So his solution was to introduce a separate HP bar layered on top of the usual HP, called fighting spirit. Once fighting spirit is depleted, they have disadvantage to attack and all offence against them have advantage. Basically, a big fat sign saying: "Fly, you fools!"
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Side note 1: Separate HP bar? Something else that tracks health as well as HP? Folks who have played 4E D&D and Pillars of Eternity may find his solution passingly familiar.
4E has healing surges: healing uses up healing surges, and once you run out, it's an indication that the adventurers need to retreat.
Pillars of Eternity has Endurance and HP tracked separately. Damage is always done to both Endurance and HP. Endurance is what keeps you up in battle: HP is a separate bar roughly equal to 4 times of Endurance. Once Endurance runs out your PC is knocked out in battle. Once HP runs out, your PC dies forever.
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Can we do better than Angry GM?
A few comments about Angry GM's solution. (Two health bars. Depleting first health bar runs causes disadvantage to attacks and disadvantage to be attacked)
Firstly, simulationists will hate this system like the plague because it only applies to PCs, and not to monsters at all according to Angry GM. Only the PCs get a buffer HP which help keep them out of harm's way. It's too obvious that the players are getting system fiat to keep them alive and give them an edge over monsters. Mind you, all modern D&D systems are specifically designed to keep players alive and skew odds in favour of the player, but making it too obvious like giving the player characters an extra hit point bar just because they're players is shoving in the player's faces a bit too much.
Second, it's a form of Death Spiral. Which he points out is a bad system because as soon as you get hurt you get worse and worse at fighting back and it becomes hopeless (hence the name Death Spiral).
Lastly,
"The worst it is going to do is let people run around and be ineffective while they should be unconscious."-Angry DM
...which is exactly what I predict will happen. HP is just as expendable and easily recoverable as Fighting Spirit, and thus players will treat HP as such: expendable. They're just expecting the cleric to heal them so they don't need to suffer from disadvantages anymore.
And from that sentence you can see my idea how to improve the HP system.
My idea is to make two separate health bars just like Angry GM; Endurance and HP. But while Endurance is easily replenished with spells, bard songs and so on, HP is not. Endurance is expendable, HP is very much less expendable. Endurance represents the PC's skills and stamina in reducing the impact of blows that otherwise would have been deadly. HP represents actual damage that is deadly to the PC.
So recovering HP is incredibly inefficient compared to Endurance.
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But should we even do this?
Gosh, should I really do this? I'm moving further and further away from traditional D&D. I've already revamped the ability scores, made warrior damage increase with every level. Didn't we learn from 4E that D&D players really really hate big sweeping changes?
Why am I doing this? Does this change really need to happen? Is there really a good reason why I'm trying to change the hitpoint system?
Tension. The purpose of this whole system is introducing tension as hitpoints slowly drain to zero. You'd think that hitpoints draining to zero would create enough tension, but that's not what happens in D&D currently.
Because good game design encourages good players behavior
In 5E, I'm currently seeing a fragile sorcerers refusing to disengage from the front-lines, back into the safety of the back-lines, because he's too focused on doing damage. All the while he's demanding the cleric to keep him standing while ignoring the pleas of his team mates and not wanting to have sanctuary cast on him to keep him safe because he wants to do DAMAGE.
I see clerics refusing to heal their buddies until they actually hit zero hitpoints because there are no negative hitpoints and penalties for hitting zero. It is quite literally more efficient for clerics in 5E (and 3E) to only heal PCs once they actually hit zero hit points as long as the PC doesn't die immediately from too much damage (very very unlikely). As long as the cleric comes before the dropping PC's turn so that they can healed and conscious for their turn. (Also because a certain Life cleric domain features only heal up to the halfway mark)
In a system where healing is prevalent, tension is sorely missing. However, players need to be able to keep on fighting due to access to resources. These are two pretty conflicting needs: The need to feel the danger and lack of resources tension in a system where players need to have the resources to keep going (otherwise they cannot continue fighting and that's worse)
So my solution? A compromise. A stack of renewable HP called Endurance which players can more easily renew. This is their expendable resource which they come into battle expecting to use. What is NOT expendable is their actual HP pool, which cannot be healed so easily. Each loss in HP is not easily gained back and has the illusion of dire consequence.
Yes, illusion, not real. Because no matter how dire it may appear in HP loss, there's still a stack of Endurance on top of it which CAN be renewed more easily. Sure, having most of your HP depleted and depending only on the Endurance bar is going to feel a lot more dangerous, and that is of course partly true. A partial truth is important to enforce a feeling of danger. The *feel* of the game is an important aspect of the game's enjoyment.
Warning: That last link is about game designer tricks used in creating great feelings from games using misdirection and illusion on the game designer's part. Exactly like a magician would do. Don't watch it if you don't want your illusions shattered.
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It's familiar, so it's easier to accept
Best of all, flavour-wise this concept is not new! In 4E, there was this concept called "Bloodied" when you hit half HP. It happened to enemies too. Flavour-wise, all your attacks up to now had done mostly superficial damage due to skill in mellowing out the blow, the will to live, and luck. Once they hit the halfway mark in HP, the damage is real.
And so, this Endurance/HP bar system ALSO applies to enemies and creatures other than the player characters! Both monsters and players can get "Bloodied" when they have lost their endurance and start taking damage to their actual HP.
Since monsters are very very rarely healed, we just give the monster "health" score to GMs. Players will just assume, quite correctly, that monsters also have endurance and HP. We just don't bother to separate the two to make GM's lives easier, so they don't need to keep track of both. On the rare occasion monsters DO get healed it only recover at most half HP.
Side note 2: Doing a bit more research, seems like my suggestion is pretty close to the Vitality/Wounds system used in some systems based on D&D (star wars d20 apparently). Except in their system Wounds are just as easily healed back as Vitality. I guess they just wanted to make their system more "deadly".
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Monsters reduced to zero HP are either killed or knocked out/disabled, player's choice as usual. PCs reduced to zero HP have a chance of being killed. He rolls a death save in secret. A single failed death save (5 and below on a d20) means the PC dies for real. But he's not allowed to tell his party members if he's alive or dead. Every round the player keeps rolling a d20, even if he knows he's already dead.
I'm borrowing this next bit from another article by Angry GM (see Schrodinger’s PC). What the GM usually does is...
You know what? I shouldn't tell you. You can read about it on Angry GM's website. Don't read it unless you want an insight into how game designers and GM's use magician's illusions reality to improve the game for players.
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Of course, health is going to accommodate this system. I'll do that later.
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Results
Health is represented by Endurance and Hit Points. Endurance always = Hitpoints. All creatures lose endurance before they lose hitpoints.
Alternative: If you find Hit Points and Endurance difficult to keep track of, just combine the two as Health. Then take note when you take damage beyond the halfway point of your total Health. All damage beyond the halfway point is much harder to heal, as per Hit Point rules below.
a) Endurance
Endurance represents the ability to reduce the impact of a blow which would have cause serious injury into a more temporary discomfort with no serious consequences. Endurance may stem from the creature's skill, stamina, muscle mass, will to live, luck and other factors.
Endurance is more easily restored by health restorative resources available to player characters such as spells, second winds, rally calls, bardic music and long rest. Endurance is thus is a resource that is more expandable to player characters.
Endurance must be fully drained to zero before any further damage is done to Hit Points. All spillover damage from an attack which reduced Endurance to zero will be transferred to Hit Points instead.
b) Hit Points
Hit Points represents the ability to sustain real injury and still keep fighting. Hit Points are based in the same things as Endurance (skill, stamina, muscle mass, will to live, luck), but when Hit Points significant injury is occurring and the effects are more permanent.
Creatures which have lost hit points been BLOODIED.
Compared to Endurance, Hit Points are NOT easily restored by health restorative resources available to player characters. A long rest restores Endurance completely, but only restores 1HP per level of the player. Most healing spells only restore
When a non-player character falls to zero HP, it's usually dead (but sometimes not if the PC wills to spare it).
When a PC drops to zero HP, she is rendered unconscious and immediately makes a Death Save in secret. Every round thereafter, as long as the PC has not been healed or stabilized, the PC keeps rolling Death Saves on her turn in secret. A failed Death Save (score of 5 or lower on a d20) results in the PC dying.
Player characters which endure a lot of hit point loss over the course of an adventure should expect to spend a great deal of time off to heal their injuries naturally. Medical care and restorative magic will speed up the recovery process.
Recommendation: While Endurance is a resource that players should expect to spend often, players should avoid Hit Point damage as much as possible. Once your Endurance is depleted, try to disengage to safety and restore your Endurance before heading back into the fray. Working with your party members to switch out bloodied allies can be very effective.
Non-PC creatures also have both Endurance and Hit Points, but for book keeping purposes only their combined values are listed as "Health". The GM will tell you when monsters are Bloodied (down to half-health).
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