STOP USING HITPOINTS

Fun fact about going below 0 HP: Third Edition D&D tracked that. At 0 you were staggered, below that unconscious, and at -Con Score negative HP you died.

This being D&D 3.x (3.0/3.5/Pathfinder 1e), there were abilities that extended that limit, abilities that let you stay conscious below 0 HP. I've seen someone play a build that was always at negative HP, with a limit of something like -300 before dying, and got bonuses for being in the negatives.

Savage Worlds does this right with wounds. Anything under a great success leaves the character shaken, so that they must save of lose their turn. Every wound is a cumulative -1 on all rolls. 4 wounds and you’re out of the fight.

This but unironically. In medieval total war 2 everythinh except for things like elephants had 1 hitpoint. And a certain chance to recive damage based on atack and defence values. So if the model was hit it died. And it looked much cooler. Contrast that with modern total war games like warhammer where there are health bars. a cavalary charge would send some dudes flying 20mm into the air and after bouncing several times they get up and walk back. Arrows and misiles also work in wierd ways. With the unit loosing sometimes half of its health before anybody dies.

In Traveller, your stats are your HP, so as you lose HP, your physical stats degrade until you are dead. HP doesn't increase, so bloat doesn't become an issue.

HP is messed up because it tries to track two different things at once. The first is how a combatant can be disabled by one big hit or a few smaller ones. The second is how a more experienced or more "heroic" combatant is harder to disable. When you put these together, you get a mess where your Aragorn ripoff can survive multiple blows from an axe.

But players don't like being at risk of dying every time they get close to a commoner with a dagger...

I prefer the original hit point system where 1 hit point means getting hit with one 14 inch shell. Considering this I'd say few living things have more than one hp.

Genuinely, I like how Ironclaw (Squaring the Circle) does it; attacks and dodges are skill checks, like anything else, how well an attacker succeeds determines which status the victim receives. Low successes only make them Hurt (with its status ailments) which a high enough roll makes them Dying or Dead (again, just statusses you inflict)

I think it's a cinematic, intuitive, yet powerful and scalable mechanic!

I really like the way it's handled in Matryoshka (a homebrew variant of Powered By The Apocalypse). There is a harm mechanic and there is a lot of leeway in how the DM dishes it out both to NPCs and PCs.

I generally prefer its focus on collaborative storytelling over straight up tactics and minutia of stats and attack ranges etc.

Check out the Red Game Table podcast if you're interested in a ttrpg that is basically cosmic horror x-files in the eastern bloc during the cold war.

"You attempt to dodge the ogre's attack but fail. Ok, so now you gotta take out the medical dummy and see if you're still conscious after taking a 20 pound wooden club to the side of your head at 45mph."

Don't get me started on mana points. YOU CANNOT CONTAIN THE POWER OF THE AETHER IN MERE NUMBERS

We used to have an angel of death once you hit a certain number of negative hit points, like you would lose you intestines or a limb that would have a negative effect that would stay until a regeneration spell was cast

I remember a game that split health into different organs, pretty much all fights where you got one hit or you did the one hitting. Way too many years have passed for me to be useful and remember more details than that and I was a really shitty caster.

On alternative to traditional hit points can be seen in OSR/NSR games derived from Into the Odd. The game still has HP, but it stands for "hit protection" instead of health/hit points. In Into the Odd, there are no attack rolls, you just roll damage dice. HP is then a buffer that resets after an encounter to absorb a hit or two. After that, characters and monsters start taking all damage to their strength stat, which provokes critical damage checks that can knock them out of combat.

So, the result is that combat is very fast, a couple rounds at most, and very decisive/deadly without having the classic OSR issue of your 1 HP wizard dying because they ran into a cat.

I don't mind the health and hit point system is Cataclysm. Health is a hidden stat that has all kinds of things contributing to it from disease progression to vitamin deficiencies. Each limb has its own hit point value that effects their functionality. Where 0 hp would mean a broken and useless arm but torso or head reaching 0 will end in immediate death.

Complex logical systems for PnP are just boring tbh. It's always stalling the adventures and encourages tryharding.

I prefer people just being in the moment with a simplified system.

Well I for one like being a fierce warrior with a huge number representing endurance, who remains completely unbothered and fights with full power even when covered in arrows, up until the final hit lands. Realism? pfft!

I don’t understand what this graphic is saying, but I agree

Legend of Zelda's Navi would like to have a word with you... (BEEP BEEP!)

Is that scarasm or are you serious ?

I dunno what WoD uses, but it aint 100% HP.