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Hit-Points

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Hit Points, Healing, and Death

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Hit Points Defined

  • Hit points are an abstraction, representing physical endurance, pain tolerance, willpower, survival skill, martial prowess, luck, and divine favor.

  • Not every lost hit point therefore equates to a wound or injury.

    • Instead, you can envision the loss of initial hit points as close calls, battering, cut and scrapes, and a wearing down of a character on multiple levels (exhaustion, mental fatigue, fear, and a feeling that one’s luck is running out).
    • Bloodied: This wearing down process applies until a character gets under half their hit points (or a quarter for higher level characters). 1
      • Lower level characters (those with fewer hit points) have less buffer between themselves and death.
    • Falling to 0 hit points or below is a serious injury. See Dying and Death below.

  • Why healing is slow if injury is abstract? Risking life and limb is not for the faint of heart, and recharging physically, mentally, and spiritually requires downtime even if no significant injuries were sustained. Everyone know that pushing one’s luck (or calling upon one’s patron deity) too often is not wise.

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Healing

Hit Point Recovery

  • Characters regain 1 HP per day of rest (no combat, spell use, or other activities allowed).
  • After the first week:
    • Con bonus: Characters with a constitution bonus also heal that amount for the week. Add the Con bonus to the number of hit points recovered for the entire week (7 + Con bonus each additional week).
    • Con penalty: Characters with a constitution penalty heal slower. Subtract the Con penalty from the number of hit points that would be recovered for the entire week (7 - Con bonus each additional week).
  • After 4 weeks of continuous rest, all HP is restored.

Magical Healing

Characters may benefit from magical healing to accelerate or eliminate the need for the normal hit point recovery process.

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Dying and Death

Zero Hit Points and Below

  • NPCs and monsters reduced to 0 hit points or below are typically slain outright.
  • Player characters that fall to 0 hit points or below are either seriously injured and at risk of imminently dying or dead outright.
    • Unconscious at 0 hit points:
      • A character reduced to exactly 0 hit points is knocked unconscious for 1d6+4 rounds or until revived by an ally.2
      • Revived characters:
        • Awaken with 1 hit point
        • Can be magically healed to a maximum of one half their full hit point total until they get a full rest.
      • Once per full rest only: Should a character be so unlucky as to fall to 0 hit point for a second time before getting a full rest, they will be treated per the dying rules below.
    • Dying at -1 to -3 hit points:
      • If a single attack reduces a character to between 1 and -3 hit points, they are knocked unconscious and dying.
      • Dying characters lose one hit point at the start of each round.
        • Characters die at -10 hit points.
        • Hit point loss stops when aid is given (binding wounds, giving a potion or spirits, healing magic, etc.)
        • Binding wounds is a full round action that automatically succeeds.
      • Coma:
        • A dying character that receives timely aid before succumbing to death is in a coma for 1d6 turns.
        • Awaken with 1 hit point
      • Cannot heal without rest:
        • Revived characters must rest for at least a week, and can only move slowly, eat, and sleep. Cannot fight, cast spells, defend, use devices, carry burdens, or engage in any activity. No normal or magical healing is possible.
        • If healed with a heal spell, restrictions are lifted.
      • Scars and lingering injuries: At -6 or worse, characters may suffer scarring or limb loss, subject to DM discretion.
    • Dead at -4 and beyond: If a single attack reduces a player character to -4 hit points or below, they are dead.

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Death

Death is not necessarily the end in a fantasy world.

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Reference:

  • PHB, 105, death at 0 hp.
  • DMG, 82, unconscious amd bleeding rules
  • DMG 110, on bad luck
  • DMG, 227-228 see glossary entries for “Death” and “Hit Points.”

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Footnotes

Footnotes

  1. Bloodied status: The bloodied status was not introduced until a later edition of D&D, but I find it a useful shorthand to distinguish between when a character or monster is fresh and when they are tiring and have taken a few significant cuts and bruises. There is no mechanical status effect attached. ↩

  2. Unconscious at 0 hit points: This is a house rule we will test. Some DMs consider anything but death at 0 hit points to be coddling players. However, I believe that this exception is a slim lifeline requiring characters to be at exactly 0 hit points and still imposes a significant penalty. But I feel it is flavorful and in keeping with the sword and sorcery genre. ↩

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