Hit Points (a suggestion)

From: Richard Develyn <Richard.Develyn_at_...>
Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2000 09:46:48 -0000

ISTM that hit points are lurking in HW under the name hurt-level or wound-level and, reading between the lines, I reckon you have about 30 HP to lose before you reach some fairly critically damaged state.

Nothing is said about how hurt you have to be before you become injured and then dying, so how about having a simple system whereby you keep track of your wound level and:

1. the wound level is applied as a minus to all physical skills
2. the wound level is the difficulty level for magical healing

When you are at WL 20 you can call yourself injured if you like, but it makes no difference. Once you reach a WL of 30 you are either dead, dying, out of action for ages, whatever.

I would like to suggest that when you are knocked to a minus AP with some sort of lethal attack that you receive a wound as follows:

Marginal: 1
Minor: D10
Major: D10+10
Complete: D10+20

If you then bounce back thanks to a bungled final action you get APs back but your wounds don't heal (so you will be at a minus).

I would also like to suggest that HW differentiates between opposed actions and resisted ones. Only opposed actions are resolved using the extended contest, resisted ones use the simple contest. Archery should be resisted, not opposed. You roll your attack, he rolls his 'dodge', and the result is then referenced against the wound table above.

I would also use this system when attacking a helpless opponent (by surprise, from behind), where basically all that can really happen is that you either succeed or fail.

I don't think that this is particularly revolutionary.

What do people think?

Richard