One rules variation I have been considering recently is replacing hit points with conditions. This is by no means an innovation, as many games have used conditions to manage character health or similar concepts, notably Apocalypse World, Burning Wheel, and probably several obscure RPGs from the 80s that I have not heard of. The goal of such condition-based systems is often to avoid hit point inflation or decrease the abstraction inherent in hit points.

The major obstacle for me in using a condition-based system is that it becomes hard to differentiate between major and minor harms, unlike with hit points where such outcomes can easily be modeled by the quantified differences between something like a die of damage and a single point of damage. Additionally, hit point systems are more familiar to tabletop gamers, and learning a new approach requires effort.

I was considering three major conditions: demoralized, wounded, and dead, giving player characters two free hits before going down. When a character suffers major harm, the player must choose one unmarked condition to mark. I imagine the general order would be demoralized first, followed by wounded, and then dead. For minor harms, I was considering recording hash marks over the major conditions, with six such hash marks leading to suffering the major harm indicated. I expect that minor harm would not generally accumulate enough to trigger suffering major harm given how I have seen RPG sessions play out, but minor harm could nonetheless provide some weight to otherwise meaningless tradeoffs (such as exploring the wilderness without having food to eat).

However, I wonder whether the complexity of this system is worth requiring players to confront an unfamiliar system. Additionally, three named conditions do not generalize to non-player characters or monsters very well, requiring referees to track a variable number of hits for some opponents anyways. My current version of this approach has inflicting harm being implemented by marking a hit on the opponent, which essentially lets hit points in by the back door.

This post might read as if, on reflection, I am leaning against this new approach in favor of just implementing some more traditional hit point system. However, I think the numerical approach of hit points does make players more likely to reason quantitatively about character capabilities rather than think creatively about problem solving. Further, there is a suggestive element of demoralization or taking a wound that seems valuable beyond suffering 1d6 damage, even if there are no direct mechanical consequences (though there could always be diegetic consequences, such as trying to bluff in a negotiation with an opponent while nursing a wound recently acquired).

Consider this house rule for traditional D&D:

When an attack roll misses, the attacker suffers damage from the defender.

This gives every attack roll the potential of loss as well as gain. Damage inflicted by the defender would be based on the equivalent of a basic attack as situationally appropriate. For example, someone attacking a dragon from behind and missing might take tail swipe damage.

How do you think it would change the game?

This shares some properties with what I have called monological combat before, though it remains more firmly within the familiar D&D approach to combat turns. See also: monological combat example and monological save versus magic.

Some potential consequences I can see include:

1. Encourage avoidance behaviors because attacking feels riskier.
2. Decrease the sense of stasis caused by several misses in a row.
3. Speed up combat by increasing average damage per round.
4. Cut down hoards of unchallenging enemies quickly.
5. Decrease the defensive value of armor.

Given a choice as a player, would you like to use this house rule? Why or why not?

My first Dark Souls dude, with a shield

These are the current shield rules (approximately the third revision) for The Final Castle. To make sense, I have included preliminarily a few general combat rules as well. Combat Tests are d20, roll high, aiming to meet or exceed an enemy threat level (similar to the probably familiar armor class or difficulty class). Hopefully the fragmentary nature is not too hard to understand.

“Unbalanced” is a state, something like a temporary condition (in 3E terms) that persists until addressed by the combatant. Deflection is a reaction that can be taken in response to an enemy attack.

Overkill

Exceeding the target number of an Ability Test by at least 4 or rolling a 20 prior to any modifiers is an Overkill. For Combat Tests, Overkill adds 1d6 damage and may have additional effects in other contexts.

Unbalanced

Unbalanced combatants may only Melee, Shoot, Flee, or Recover and may not deflect attacks withs Shields. Recover balance with a maneuver.

Deflection

To deflect an attack, deploy a shield. Deflection must be declared before rolling dice to resolve an attack. Deploying a shield Unbalances a combatant but does not require an Action. Shields may not be deployed when Unbalanced. Bypass Maneuvers cannot be deflected with a shield. Different kinds of shields offer other benefits. See the Shields entry in the Weapons section for details.

Maneuvers

Resolve Maneuvers with Melee, Shoot, or Throw Actions depending on the character of the desired effect, substituting Maneuver effects for damage. Overkill applies to Maneuvers also. Thus, Maneuver Overkills cause the Maneuver effect and also 1d6 damage.

Recover (Maneuver)

Recover from being Unbalanced, stand up from prone, or escape a Grapple.

Shields

To deflect an attack, deploy a shield. Deflection must be declared before rolling dice to resolve an attack. Deploying a shield Unbalances a combatant but does not require an Action. Shields may not be deployed when Unbalanced. Bypass Maneuvers cannot be deflected with a shield. Shields come in three varieties:

• Bucklers grant +4 to parry maneuvers, but are useless against ranged attacks and great weapons.
• Medium shields grant +2 defense against small missiles.
• Tower shields deflect all small missiles but are useless against standard or smaller weapons.

Putting this all together, it means that PCs with a shield can deflect (that is, totally nullify) one melee attack per combat (not per round) essentially for free, though the deflection must be “used” before rolling Defense (the equivalent in the system of an enemy attack roll). After a shield has been used for deflection, combat options narrow generally due to becoming Unbalanced, and specifically the shield may not be used again until balance is recovered.

Since maneuvers work like attack rolls, but substituting effects for standard damage and only inflicting any damage upon Overkill results (exceeding target numbers by 4 or rolling a natural 20), the effect is that a skilled fighter attempting a Recovery Maneuver is still fighting (not potentially “wasting” a turn), just at a disadvantage (approximately -4) if they wish to earn another use of their shield during the current combat.

(Don’t worry about Parry Maneuvers; they are beyond the scope of this post.)

Following these system guidelines, here is a set of balanced, predefined weapons.

2DTH stands for “two dice, take highest” and 2DTL stands for “two dice, take lowest.” 3DTH is “three dice, take highest” and so forth.

One-handed melee

• Axe (2DTL, sundering)
• Dagger (2DTL, close)
• Flail (2DTH, dangerous)
• Javelin (2DTL, throwable)
• Mace (2DTL, armor-piercing)
• Spear (2DTL, reach)
• Sword, arming
• Throwing knife (2DTL, throwable)
• Tomahawk (2DTL, throwable)
• War hammer (2DTL, armor-piercing)

Two-handed melee

• Chain scythe (2DTH, reach, dangerous)
• Halberd (2DTH, long-hafted, sundering)
• Maul (4DTH, heavy, crude)
• Pike (3DTH, long-hafted)
• Pole-flail (3DTH, dangerous)
• Sword, claymore (reach)
• Sword, two-handed (2DTH)
• Sword, zweihander (3DTH, heavy)

One-handed ranged

• Crossbow, hand (2DTL)
• Sling (slow)

Two-handed ranged

• Bow, short
• Bow, long (2DTH, immobile)
• Crossbow, light (2DTL, armor-piercing)
• Crossbow, heavy (armor-piercing, slow)

The way this works out, the arming sword, two-handed sword, and short bow end up each being the default weapon (the mechanical result of not applying any benefit or flaw) within a larger category, which feels right to me. I am pretty happy with all of these except the long bow. I thought about “heavy,” but that does not quite seem to be an appropriate flaw to balance the higher damage. Something where the long bow could only be used with sufficient area to allow the proper stance would be best, so I invented “immobile,” which means that the wielder cannot both move and take a shot in the same round. It may still be possible to improve on that, however. The limited number of properties, especially per given weapon, seems far more approachable that my previous effort, while also prioritizing fictional logic.

You may note that there are a few different weapons listed that are still mechanically identical (such as javelins, tomahawks, and throwing knives). I do not necessarily see that as a problem, as they may have different tool uses outside of combat as well. I also added a few somewhat absurd items to the list (chain scythe!) because they are fun, and to show how the blending of properties can make stranger weapons both viable and different beyond just literal re-skinning, which I often find unsatisfying as a player.

Dark Souls zweihander (personal photo)

Many systems for nuancing weapons function as an overlay for simpler base rules. Maces might gain benefits versus armored opponents, for example. This is a good approach as it is easy to understand and has reasonable face validity, but leads to problems of needing to come up with benefits for weapons that do not easily suggest advantages, such as the basic arming sword. This becomes especially clear when using d6 damage for all weapons. It is, in some sense, the inverse of the problem with AD&D variable damage. When the longsword does d8/d10 damage and maces deal d6, damage dealing capacity dominates. When all weapons deal flat damage, extra properties dominate.

In order to navigate these twin rules design hazards, here is an experiment that trades damage dealing potential for benefits, but uses a drop highest/lowest dice scheme to keep the expected damage bounded (no comments about 5E please; Philotomy did it first). Further, the effect of benefits is increased, because they need to really be clearly better within a given niche. A mace getting +1 or +2 to hit versus armor is just not good enough to justify the decreased effectiveness against all other types of opponents.

This is a mechanics-first approach to balancing weapon capabilities and power. Rather than looking at weapons naturalistically and applying special-case rules as necessary to represent weapon benefits, this guarantees a level of mathematical trade-off. It is meant to coexist with d6 hit dice as well, but could also be applied to a variable hit die (“Basic style”) approach, substituting class hit die for the d6. Rules have been phrased here in terms of the d6, however, for clarity.

Weapons begin with one of the following templates:

• One-handed melee: 1d6 damage
• Two-handed melee: 2d6 (take best) damage
• Two-handed missile: 1d6 damage

Then, properties (benefits and flaws) may be applied by moving up or down the damage dice chain. Rolling multiple dice means the best (or worst) value is taken, depending on where in the dice chain the weapon lies. For example, a one-handed melee weapon with a benefit drops down to two dice, take lowest. Add another benefit and it would be doing three dice, take lowest. And so forth. Flaws may be added to move up the dice chain. For example, a one-handed long-haft (flaw) reach (benefit) spear does one die of damage (standard one-handed melee template) and the reach/awkward properties balance out. In essence, lower damage is a flaw and higher damage is a benefit.

This means that you could have a one-handed melee throwable, armor-piercing, sundering weapon, but you will be rolling 4d6 and taking the worst result for damage when using this swiss army knife monstrosity (assuming it has no flaws). There are some interesting corollaries from this system which you do not often see, such as the 3d6, take best two-handed long-haft pole-arm (meaning that it can only be used effectively with two hands and at reach, which seems just right).

Benefits

• Armor-piercing: +4 attack versus medium or heavy armor
• Close: +4 attack following grapple
• Reach: attack from the second rank
• Sundering: +4 when trying to damage armor or shields
• Throwable

Weapons acting within their area of specialty (for example, reach weapons at reach or armor-piercing weapons versus armor) never deal less than one die of damage.

(Rather than the +4 bonus, you could also use 5E style advantage.)

Flaws

• Crude: drops down one damage die step per level of target armor
• Dangerous: wielder takes 1d3 damage on natural 1 attack rolls
• Heavy: following a miss, an action is required to ready the weapon
• Long-haft: may only be used at reach
• Slow: requires an action to ready (or reload)

If using an approach like this, a set of basic weapons should probably be defined so that players don’t need to do any reasoning to figure out how a mace should be represented. There is no reason not to expose the underlying system for players that wish to “build” slightly more unique weapons as well though. The list of properties was kept intentionally short, based on my experience with weapon property systems, and should be taken as a set of examples rather than a comprehensive list. New properties giving bonuses to particular maneuvers (such as a bonus to disarm maneuvers for a weapon like a parrying dagger) could be added as needed, keeping in mind basic balance considerations.

A few weapons do not fit well into this structure, such as nets and whips. This seems less like a flaw in the system, though, than a sign that such items are not really weapons (that is, tools designed to deal damage), but rather things with more specific purpose that just happen to be useful in combat. It is probably better to give such items special moves that can be made in combat and design them outside of the strictures of these guidelines.

Public domain image from Telecanter