For those of you who just stumbled upon this video over a year later, thanks for watching! I'd also like to share that I play many other ttrpg's besides D&D 5e; The list is quite extensive at this point. I find a particular enjoyment in creating homebrew rules mechanics, especially when they add to the game in a fun and fresh way. Hence the curiosity in what D&D 5e would look like with such changes inspired by Viking Death Squad or Into the Odd. Cheers!

When I see videos like this, I always have in mind something an old friend told me once: "D&D is the best roleplay game ever, you just need to change the rules..."

When I describe hit points, I am often reminded of a description from a Conan novel that I read many years ago. In the story, Conan is fighting against a supremely skilled swordsman who is armed with a rapier. At one point, the swordsman strikes what would be a mortal wound to any lesser warrior but, due to his incredible reflexes, Conan manages to twist at the last second and the strike grazes across his ribs instead of piercing his heart. It's a painful wound, to be sure, but Conan is tough (and probably pumped on adrenalin, but that detail's not in the original story) so he shrugs it off and keeps fighting. Eventually the swordsman's repeated attacks start to fatigue even Conan and it's clear that soon one of those deadly strikes will land properly... That's hit points to me.

I like to remedy Hitpoints by making the 'bloodied' effect relevant to roleplay. Characters do not take any physical damage until they are at half HP, the first half of their HP is their armor or weapons absorbing an otherwise successful blow, draining their stamina. Once past half HP, attacks get through the armor but remain small like a cut until the final blow. As a DM I can narratively explain like, "Your sword makes contact with their shoulder and finds purchase, you see a little blood this time as you cut him." and suddenly that player can gauge how well their foe is doing.

My DM (for AD&D) had the brilliant idea that weapons determine your AC (parrying, keeping distance, etc.), while armor does damage reduction. Prevents people absurdly sleeping in their armor, but allows them to defend themselves while buck naked so long as they can grab a weapon. I love modifications like that.

Both hit points and armor class are abstract concepts. I view hit points in 5E as a form of combat stamina and luck. The characters are dodging and parrying attacks into minor wounds until they run out of hit points when a mortal injury occurs. This helps explain why short and long rests work the way they do. Resting restores stamina. Armor class represents how difficult a character is to injure, not how hard they are to hit. It is a combination of avoiding an attack as well as getting through the armor to cause injury

Interesting concepts, I really like the "armor score" idea. However, finding a way to implement both of these is basically just writing your own d20 rules light system and you can divorce it from D&D almost entirely if you so wish.

Although interesting, i would just prefer to try other systems. Removing hit points just makes them a smaller pool, with the only added benefit of time saving, which could be achieved by using only the average damage. Your example of the giant sword would still be, as you described, something that your character just survives if he has enough health left. My biggest improvement in my current almost 3-year-old game was to give a Ring of Regeneration to the players. Now we all know that a good hit can and WILL cut your arm off. The second one is VERY problematic, it would mean that a high damage character would quite literally never miss. Sneak attacks can go very high tier2 or 3, as so spells. Or you will make characters with a more supportive role never hit, or the nova paladin, gloomstalker, any rogue or any wizard would be the strongest beings in the universe, removing any challenge for later levels

There’s still one issue with HP that hasn’t been addressed which you actually mentioned at the start of the video. Characters on low hp still being able to do what they did at full hp. In my homebrew rules I have AC and HP for each body part. The head has the highest ac but lowest hp. Reducing the head to 0 means death, reducing the torso to 0 means death saves, reducing an arm to 0 means you can’t use that arm (drop shield, no 2nd attack etc) reducing a leg to 0 means your speed is halved. It’s been great for roleplay

These both seem like a wonderful ideas to build a new system around (definitely checking out Viking death squad)! Not too jazzed on trying to insert it into 5Es existing system due to the amount of DM work that entails.

the removal of damage can get really tricky with factors such as resistances, spells of high level, character level, class abilities, spell diversity, number of attacks and absolute dependency on Constitution score.

After playing many other RPGs, I like this discussion a lot. There are more realistic combat systems out there (including wound locations, ect). It's always interesting to home brew what makes sense. You should also remember, after receiving a serious wound, you can easily die the next day or 2. Internal hemorrhaging, tissue trauma, and infection are big killers (in the real world).

Or you could roll to Hit vs 10 +Dex Bonus, then take your Armor's DR which would be AC -10. This does not require any additional rules to make it fit into 5e. This way you're Leather Rogue will be harder to hit than your Full Plate Fighter, while your Fighter will be harder to kill when you do hit.

The second option (just rolling damage/armor as damage reduction) is how the very excellent Into The Odd works. I love it. Makes combat hella-scarey and fast

Not bad ideas even though i doubt I would use either one and here is why: #1. More work for the GM I am here (along with the players) to weave a grand story of heroism of both epic Success and failures. I am not going to spend A LOT of time trying to re figure how much damage a FB or any other attack is going to do, because in the end it is going to sound arbitrary & may cause hard feelings with our Intrepid heroes. #2 armor now becomes King. Every hero might as well walk around like a mideival tank or die. #3 Healing is out: if hits are reduced by armor, than you dont need a cleric in the group, you would need a stand by armor smith, otherwise it makes no sense ( how do you heal armor?) #4 your still calling them hit points. #5 A succesful roll to hit means you found a weakness in the armor ( Legolas was directing where to aim on the orcs, where their armor was weakest) since its not always about brute strength to cut into flesh. I could probably go on but the point I am making, I think D & D works as intended. One final thing, our hero with the 5 hps: How many times in movies have we seen the protaganist, beaten & bloodied, about to be undone, yet saves the day & maybe himself at the last possible moment. I betcha they had 5 hps left as well :)

This is an interesting idea for sure, but I feel like you should probably just try out different rpg systems if you're wanting to do this, rather than do the MASSIVE overhaul your proposing for 5e. The Quest RPG system has a pretty similar rule for just 10 hit points. The biggest problem I came up with was that it was super easy for people to go down. It also feels a lot less narratively crunchy to say "you take 2 points of damage" compared to you take "20". The balance would also be pretty hard to fix, and it would make spellcasting pretty much always better --- as they do half damage on a success. So it would mean that all save spells would do minimum one damage (unless they did nothing on a success). The armor score system is... interesting. I don't know if I completely agree with it though, it heavily favors people with larger armor scores and heavy weapons, while making light armor and smaller weapons pretty much pointless. an enemy with plate and a shield already has a DR of 10, which means that they are literally immune to any damage a dagger could deal. Even with a d6 weapon and +5 damage modifier, you'd only deal 1 point of damage if you rolled Maximum. This is pretty poorly thought out idea I think that heavily hinders small / light weapon / dual wielding, and skews everything towards heavy armor and two handed weapons.

We've tried the second option and I'm a huge fan. We called the target to hit your "threshold" and that number would increase based on armor, agility, and equipment! It kept the game moving a lot faster. (at one point we had 12 players around the table and a round could still be under 5 min. This same threshold concept could fit nicely into ICRPG's answer to making social encounters initiative based!

As much as I love the first option (been using it for monsters for a LOOOOOOONG time and love it to bits!), it doesn't remove hitpoints, it simply (greatly) simplifies the formula xD And now all of a sudden everyone is either a minion from 4e or very close to being one.

In the Star Wars D20 (the first one), your characters has both Wounds and Vitality. Your Wounds (the actual amount of damage you can take before you drop) is directly linked to your Constitution Score and is only further modified by Feats or other outside forces. You gain Vitality the same way Hit Points work in D&D. Vitality is a reserve of energy you have to dodge attacks and use force abilities and skills. Damage dealt to you comes off of Vitality first and then Wounds. On a critical hit, you roll the d20 again to 'confirm' the crit. If the second hit result would also successfully hit, then you confirmed the crit and all damage goes straight to Wounds, otherwise, it was just an automatic hit. I like the rework design of using armor as pure damage reduction and just rolling damage instead of 'to hit' and then damage.

I feel like these both are great ideas for low level characters but becomes difficult when dealing with higher leveled characters

First, I want to say, I love this conversation, keep up the great videos! I'm not particularly fond of getting rid of HP, AC & particularly attack rolls, and not because I think it's a great mechanic, one of the reasons I didn't play D&D for years was because it wasn't a good tactical simulation and I just couldn't reconcile the game mechanic and how this stuff works in real life. All the other games I played, armor was damage reduction, Savage Worlds you have 3 wounds, your solutions are good! (Though when I play, I want to roll to hit. Don't take that fun from me.) The reason why I'd never house rules these is, there are certain things that make this game Dungeons & Dragons. At its core are AC & Hit Points. That's the game my players are showing up to play and changing the fundamentals of the system seems like I'm just trying to create a new system. I think if those mechanics don't appeal to you, try a different game, cuz that ain't D&D.

I love the way how EZD6 by DM Scotty handles this. Most actors can endure 3 hits before perishing. Armor gives you a chance to avoid a strike by meeting or beating the target number of the armor you're wearing.

Really love the idea of the first option for a duel idea. As opposed to running a whole combat encounter you just streamline it, makes it more narratively interesting.

I'd be interested in the second option of Armor as DR, but I think I might tweak it in a few ways. Like that attacks do a minimum of 1 damage even if the DR would cancel it entirely. This way you don't have high AC creatures don't feel entirely invincible to mobs (albeit it would take a mob a while to take them down).

There are issues with both approaches, the first one (the amount of hits till they die) really favours those who attack more in a round widely throwing off the balancing, the second approach greatly lowers the effect of characters who deal small amounts of damage but to more targets or in a trade of for utility sorta like a monk

I don't particularly like the hit points system, but rather than get rid of it, in my games, I created an exhaustion track. Basically, once a character loses about half their HP, they start to gain levels of exhaustion as they take increasing amounts of damage. This shows they're actually being hurt (rather than being as good as new all the way down to 1 HP), and it means if they take a lot of damage it takes some time (or higher level magic) to make a recovery.

I love that alternative to AC / damage, including the exploding dice is a nice touch. The alt HP is intriguing and I'll have to pitch these ideas to my group

I think the number 1 problem with 1 damage per hit is that everything will deal the same damage on a hit. That means a rat bite, when it hits, will deal the same damage as a fire giant's greatsword. It isn't as clear if they are separate, but If you are fighting both the rat and the giant, and on a turn both hit, it will be clear how weird it is that the rat bite was just as devastating as the giant's blow. And if you change it so that stronger foes deal higher, but fixed, damage values, then you're just playing with the average damage, which is already an option D&D offers. It is definitely an interesting idea that can be worked on, but I'm afraid it tends to turn into the same as playing with average damage, but with normalized values.

I've been working on building a ttrpg. The part about just rolling damage was super inspirational. It helped me get over a mental block. Thank you.

Changing armor class into damage reduction sounds like a very neat thing

I get why you'd want to remove HP or attack rolls, but at that point you might as well just find a different TTRPG to play instead of having to rework the entirety of D&D.

currently working on the following: HP bubbles: for example you have 24 HP and , this means you have 3 bubbles each 8 hitpoints. (u have 60 HP = 3 bubbles with 20 HP) If an enemy deals 10 damage on bubble gets destroyed, if he deals less then 8 none get destroyed, but also extra damage disappears, this system is very close to the normal System, but i implemented special rules to pop more bubbles at once, for example ambushing +1 bubble of damage. In later levels each bubble gets more powerful, that means low level monsters like goblins could only maybe damage you with a crit. With ambushing and flanking for example being more effectiv, the party needs to think of stuff on how they cant be tricked or attacked, otherwise they easily die. I am still not sure, if 3 bubbles is always perfect or not, I will see when I test it. this was just a short explanation and i will try to implement this in my next campaign on a more detailed level, hope you liked it. if this idea already exists please dont talk shit, send me the link and then i can improve mine :)

The homebrew system I'm testing right now combines bits and pieces of Macchiato Monsters, Knave, and Mausritter. Combat works like your second example with no attack rolls, just damage rolls. Armor provides an HP buffer for each encounter -- the first time you get hit, you roll to see how much temporary HP the armor provides for this fight. You have to patch the armor up between battles to refill its HP buffer. Shields let you completely block one attack per turn, but if the attack does a lot of damage you'll be stunned and miss your next action. Both shields and armor can degrade with use, using the "risk die" system from Macchiato. Also, combat actions are simultaneous (except that ranged attacks go first), so it's very possible for two combatants to kill each other at the same time. After your HP runs out, further damage goes straight to your stats (STR for physical damage, DEX or WIL for other types of damage and exertion). Each time you take stat damage you also get an associated condition ("Wounded", "Slowed", "Shaken") that fills up space in your inventory. If a stat hits zero, or if your inventory gets completely full of conditions, you die.

I have thought about removing armor class because it’s never fun to miss. The crit damage idea is really interesting to me because I view it as an extra attack. It’s a lot easier to attack twice with your small dagger than your huge great axe, and it could come with additional weapon perks. For a piercing weapon like the rapier attacking twice would be easier it could crit on an 8 or a 7

Interesting ideas. The main problem with HP that I always had as a long term DM was the notion that it is a combination of health, luck and expertise. So when the healer is healing your missing HP, what is he healing actually? Your luck and expertise? While removing the Attack Roll completely does sound interesting on paper, it does not account for 1 specific thing: the possibility for an attacker to miss his opponent or to better put it - the possibility for the defender to dodge the attack completely. This is why a small game of which I am the author has created an entirely new system, where every creature has a very limited amount of HP determined by their endurance (constitution). They also have a Miss Rating that is determined by their agility and awareness. Characters may opt to wear armour which may reduce their Miss Rating (making them easier to be hit in combat) but will improve their Protection and Toughness Ratings, making them harder to Wound (reduce their very very limited HPs) if they do get hit. The game that this is from has been in development for 5 years and I am really proud of this system :D

Teacher i've got a question.... if we go by the second method of armor class - 10 = armor score... if i go with a monk that at early levels deals a 1D4+dex modifier damage, i would need to have a +3 to be able to beat a 6 armor score but if i encounter anything higher than that i would need a crit to be able to roll again and hopefully deal damage. Now i know the chances of scoring 4 on the d4 is quite high but as i level up and change dices those chances go lower and i would need to put some point in dex to increase my damage modifier to compensate but still feels like mid-game monks wouldn't do much... sure monks can attack multiple times and add up to the damge and surpass the Armor socre but you'd have to spend all of your attacks to deal damage once... What do we do?

Hey House DM, I'm Anthony_C! I'm glad you enjoyed the commentary on that forum post. I've played with these variants a few times since that post, and am pleased to say they both work very well. They lend themselves to different kinds of games. Currently, I'm iterating on mixing a static number of "Hit Points" (say, six or ten) and using them as a player-burnt buffer for consequences as in Blades in the Dark. In this manner, at least theoretically, fantasy characters can still get rough and tumble with their foes without being too fragile, but I get to use more varied consequences of failing rolls or being the target of monster's actions. For example, I think it makes sense that having an ogre hit you with a felled tree should (1) physically harm you, and (2) knock you away or prone. If a player fails a roll by a large amount ("critical failure"), they will likely suffer both consequences. The player can opt to take those, or burn some "Hit Points" (see: luck, heroism, resolve, etc.) to mitigate one or both of those consequences. I will be updating that linked post soon to share my thoughts on this method. Thanks for the shoutout. Game on!

Both ideas are cool! At least on paper, as I haven´t tried any of them yet. However, playing OSR I tend to narrate the outcome of each combat round after everyone has acted, so any misses, near misses, low damage, high damage.... get bundled up into a single narrative. You might actually defend against that mace with your shield but the attack was too strong and you still took HP damage.

This sounds much like the system in Savage Worlds where you have no HP and taking hits makes you both easier to kill (shaken) and worse at doing anything until you go down at 3 wounds, which can actually happen in a single hard hit. That system does have rolling to hit and rolling for damage with exploding dice, but hitting things is pretty similar in almost all circumstances. E.g.: shooting a person-sized target with a gun in normal conditions within range is always a TN 4 (target number 4, like DC) to hit them, no matter what. The player's shooting skill determines the die type they roll (d4 - d12), along with other factors, so someone very good at shooting will almost never miss that shot.

I wanna go with: "You still hit, just at half damage." I also think armor should reduce damage. And ALL of this goes off if you are proficient in the weapon you're attacking. Makes armor more than just a sheet of metal, leather, or hide that is just decorative. If you got any suggestion or things ro point out, like barbarian's and monks unarmored defense, im open to ideas

I like the "only roll damage" idea. I think there should be a different way to lower different types of damage. Without over complicating it, maybe different armors or modifiers for different damage types.

The damage reduction idea is one I have thought about before, and it's definitely intriguing. I think you would need to pair it with the exploding dice in order to not make d4 weapons obsolete.

You basically described how Savage Worlds works with these two solutions. Your attack roll is either against an opponents parry score (melee) or the default dc (ranged). Miss and your character dodges/parries/blocks. Hit and damage is rolled. Damage is compared to toughness. If it doesn't beat toughness, your armor stopped the blow. If it beats the toughness, you are shaken (minor nick or scratch). If it beats it by 4 or more, it causes a wound. Each multiple of four beyond the target number is another wound. Each hero can take four wounds. Each wound gives them a cumulative -1 to all their rolls (the more wounded you are, the harder it is to do stuff). The fourth wound knocks you out. Attack and damage dice can explode. When you roll max, you roll again and add it to the total. If the explode roll is max again, you roll and add that as well. If your attack beats the target number by 4 you add an extra d6 to the damage roll (crit). My main takeaway from this video is: Savage Worlds > DnD.

So with that second example, is that rogue (ranger? cleric?) just done for if he can't damage blargblarg? Like a rogue with a dagger can't chip away at a barbarian's HP, but a barbarian will not always hit the rogue? Either way, the biggest hassle I can imagine is suddenly a ton of spells become useless in combat. Advantage and disadvantage mean nothing when you aren't rolling to hit. so perhaps instead they give you advantage on damage rolls?

I would like to add a point towards rolls to hit, then rolling damage You roll to hit to see if you hit or not, but since all hits don’t do the same amount of effect We roll damage to see how well the hit landed… Pro tip, if you take the top number of a damage die mean critical hit, then you double the max value of the die, allowing for different range of options to apply to diversify weapons more

Very interesting stuff. Magic, in both systems, would be a tough fix, but very cool nonetheless. Back when 2e was exciting and new, we used the idea of exploding die on nat 20s. The attack dealt full damage and then you role again to see if there was additional damage. If you roled a second nat 20 you repeated the process... 3rd, yep... and so on.

In the current system I’m working on, there’s six levels of woundedness. The first is unwounded, where you perform ideally. The second is hurt, where you’re in some pain and have some small cuts or bruises, but no effects yet. The third is wounded, where you begin to feel some weakness or inability from your injuries. The fourth is maimed, where you are seriously wounded and are becoming very ineffective, the fifth is dying, where you can likely do little more than cower, block attacks or attempt to flee. And the sixth and last is death. This makes wounds more serious, deadly and actually having effect on the gameplay. Different damage types also inflict wounds differently. Piercing damage from, say, arrows or stabs damage according to the effectiveness of the hit on the attack roll. Cutting damage is all chance but you’re rolling multiple die so there’s a good chance that you may inflict massive damage or you may inflict only light damage and perhaps even none. Blunt damage deals a base damage no matter what plus additional rolled damage. And hewing damage (chiefly from axes) does base, has additional cutting damage and a chance to sever limbs from the body. There’s more I’m working on and I’ve yet to playtest, but these are ideas I’m playing with to allow for a more “realistic”, brutal and dynamic game.

6:25 this is similar to how damage is calculated in GURPS - armor adds to your damage reduction. But in addition to that, all damage that "get through" so to speak is then recalculated based on damage type before it's applied. GURPS additionally replaces AC with the defending character rolling to dodge or parry, rather than removing it entirely, but this rule makes more sense there, where during combat everyone only gets 1 action per combat round (every turn is 1 second, rather than 6).

There’s nothing wrong with either system, you just need to adjust the mindset. If you view AC as a “to damage” roll not a to hit roll, then get rid of the Dex modifier and use the Con modifier + armour instead. Just assume they WILL be hit, unless they choose to dodge out of the way, or avoid it some other way… you’re rolling to see the extent of the damage. This makes more sense to me and fixes so many arguments around AC, without actually changing any rules (apart from swapping the modifier used) by merely adjusting the mindset of the roll. Ofcourse platemail would make you easier to hit, but now it makes sense that it makes you harder to damage. We’ve started using this mindset of rolling to damage, along with a couple more homebrew rules to make combat more deadly and give weapons options.

Excellent video! This is why there is a longstanding tradition of homebrew rules in RPGs. Our table adopted rules based on your second option long ago. Why? Armor doesn't make you harder to hit; in fact, armor can make you easier to hit (since it is harder to dodge in heavy armor) - but it does absorb damage. So we use hit effectiveness (hit v. avoidance). How well the stroke is landed places the hit into a category and then damage = roll for that category less armor. It makes for quick, adjustable, and exciting play!

So for the damage reduction (2nd option discussed) what would you do with casters? In the aforementioned fireball attack, that's 8d6. Chances of a "crit" are high, and chances are even a huge damage reduction of 10 (old AC of 20) would see massive amounts of damage. This second option sounds pretty cool, but I'm curious how it works with the different damage types.

Question: what is there in these homebrew ideas that Powered by the Apocalypse in general and Dungeon World in particular doesn't already do better ? Thanks.

I've played games with both of these concepts and a third where someone rolls to hit and the other rolls to defend. The difference between rolls is the damage dealt. It allowed a more conscious effort to deal more or take less damage based on where you wanted to put stats. Regardless, I've been meaning to test out some rules to try and make combat faster if possible. Great video!

Done something a little different, AC becomes Defense, Armour becomes damage reduction. Roll your attack add the bonuses of your weapon ( if they apply using the right weapon for the right job is a big plus in this system) equaling a foes Def means 1 injury, each point over is an additional point of injury. simple and very effective.

The problem I see with it (wondering if it can be fixed) is that combat would likely go down to only 2 or 3 rounds. And it might take away from the “epic awesomeness” of your character running in to take on 5 goblins at a time because that could mean death fairly easily, so the player slinks away from the fight instead.

The old d20 Star Wars rules had a neat hitpoint system. Basically you had a pool of Hit points equal to your Con score that represented your actual health, then you had a vitality pool that was the "hp" from your class. Your vitality refreshed very easily and was depleted before your health. Health healed very slowly and if it was ever fully depleted your character could die (I can't remember if it had a death save type mechanic or was just 0 hp=dead). Critical hits and massive damage simply skipped vitality and directly damaged health. So if a character lost vitality, it represented near misses, soaking damage etc and could be narrated as such, but if a character lost health, they were actually injured.

Definitely going to implement the second solution, removing "to hit" rolls and just going to the damage roll and using an Armor Score as damage reduction. Way more elegant design.

I love these ideas. I favor the 1st method for simplicity and the fact that you still need to roll a Hit. Not only is rolling a Hit a fun central part of D&D but it is also realistic. Yes I'm serious. I have been a Martial Arts instructor and Kickboxing Coach for over 30 years (and former competitor). In the ring, cage or octagon combatants actually miss far more often than they hit. Pay close attention while watching the UFC. Anyway, method #1 has real potential.

I would like to know how you would handle magic missile its a classic magic spell but it's 3 separate attacks would it do 3 damage or would you have to say it only does one but what if I choose different targets it gets hard when spells are involved it would just break the game to cast 3rd level magic missile and do 5 hits on a character that would kill just about anything

One of the systems I’ve appreciated from the past, rather than simplifying and removing either to-hit or hit points, so to split hit points into vitality and wounds… Vitality is typically the straightforward replacement to hit points, only typically slightly less (maybe every class drops a die code for their hit points when determining vitality). Vitality represents your character’s ability to weather those non-lethal hits. Losing vitality is still getting hit, but remain standing through sheer tenacity. When you vitality drops to zero, you can no longer run, you take penalties to strength and dexterity, and you have to roll to stay conscious. Wounds, on the other hand, is your actual meat value. It’s your flesh, and is typically equal to your constitution. Once you’re out of vitality, all hits go directly to wounds. Similarly, critical hits do not hit vitality, but go directly to wounds (but do not double damage as per usual). When you run out of wounds, you are immediately unconscious and dying. I realize it’s adding complexity rather than simplifying, but I always liked the clearer representation of hit points, and the breakdown of durability be mortality.

The only problem with a standard 1 Hit (a.k.a. "wounds") is that a dagger does the same damage as a zweihander. This proved to be a fatal flaw in my group, because we have talking animals wielding needle swords and a giant wielding an anchor as a club. So in my home-brew (called Danger Dice) weapons are rated Tiny, Small, Medium, Large or Giant and do 1,2,3 4, or 5 points per Hit. Your attack roll determines how many Hits you did. Thus there is no damage roll. Armor deducts damage per attack, not per Hit. Hit points measure physical stamina plus grit. As you lose hit points your attacks get weaker. Our combats are fast and very, very scary.

Super stoked to experiment with removing to-hit rolls and instead using just damage dice rolls. Do you think you would ever try this in your games?

Just found this and as I'm currently in the process of making a ttrpg this was greatly useful. Especially the link in the description. Thanks for all the helpful information

I've been brewing similar ideas for a while, coming from a simplification perspective, and there's one big and fully overlooked benefit to the D&D5e method: roll to hit is a greater than function, and damage is minor addition. *These are always going to be the quickest mathematical equations we can perform.* In fact, 5e takes this two steps farther, doing away with most subtraction (fie PF2) and introducing Advantage. Armor-as-subtractor significantly increases the amount of math done during every attack, because subtraction has to "drop the ten". As an extreme example, the tarrasque hits you for 112 damage, subtract your 14 armor, then subtract that from your 103 HP. You have to "drop the ten" four times in that equation. I would *always* rather roll two d20 and compare them to your AC. I think pure AC d6 "wound" systems could be a potential solution, but such systems also introduce a bell curve to every roll. Success has a high floor and skyrockets after only a few dice, rendering the roll a formality. The difference between a fireball and a broken nose also becomes buckets of dakka. Worst of all, the DM has no practical sense of success rate. A 25% success rate in a d20 system is DC15. But in a d6 system? Calculate a hypergeometric distribution on the fly~ While 5e has its pitfalls, the combat math is shockingly elegant. The erroneous pair of HP and AC *do* tangibly speed up gameplay, which is maddeningly counter-intuitive. It's witchcraft.

A few things: 1. Hit points doesn't just represent life force, much as it gets used that way. To an extent, it represents life, but it's also a matter of stamina, and ALL wounds, not just bleeding ones. So essentially, HP also represents hits that don't actually make it through your armor, because while the armor may still be intact, it doesn't mean you necessarily take no damage. When a canine bites you, its jaw strength can cause your armor itself to bite into your skin, and there's the natural tendency of animals to violently yank once they have their jaw locked, meaning muscle damage. It can also represent your ability to push through the pain to keep fighting. In the case of the greatsword, either the armor manages to hold up to the hit, or they could be hit not by the blade of the axe, but to either side of it (It's still a giant piece of metal, it's gonna hurt when you get hit with the blunt side), so a hit still occurs, but it doesn't necessarily mean instant death. In fact, shy of direct head or heart shots, the reality is, almost nothing instantly kills a human. 2. The problem of the 'exploding die': Rogues. in 5e, Rogues can easily start swinging for more than 3d6 in a single swing, meaning that their statistical chance of exploding multiple dice keep going up, and since there's no technical limit to the number of times they can sneak attack in a combat, that means that it's going to see the party making more and more certain to set the Rogue up, which also means more work for the DM. As well, you would have to fully redo all CRs in the game, because hobgoblins suddenly become WAY more deadly with their Martial Advantage ability, given that it literally adds dice to their every attack. And that's just the hobgoblins, setting aside things like breath attacks, and other things that are dice adders. This also means that, the lower the die being rolled, the higher the probability OF critical hits. Even a greataxe lowers the difficulty of critical from 1:20 to 1:12, and d4 is literally 1:4 (Magic Missile gets way more brutal). 3. AC isn't, despite terminology, about armor. The 10 represents the average person's ability to get out of the way of, or take, a hit without taking significant damage. It can represent blocking, parrying, dodging, deflecting the hit, or even the armor or whatnot being able to stand up to the hit without causing significant damage. With changing this much of 5e, honestly? You're far better off going to a different system, such as Warhammer Fantasy, or World of Darkness, where they have systems built in to represent these facets of combat. WoD even takes things like weapon speed into account, allowing character who use faster weapons to attack more often, versus those who swing more powerful weapons, making for a better balance of combat. There's a certain point where you're doing more work than needed, and I would love to see other publishers start to get some love.

I’ve thought about the interpretation of HP and how it doesn’t fit with the standard descriptions for hitting and dealing damage many times. Cool to see other with the same thoughts and some cool fixes!

Adapting a bit from Pathfinder 2e, we can use the four degrees of success & failure for combat hits. Meeting or beating a AC causes regular damage. Beating it by 10 or more is a crit, double damage. Rolling a bit below the AC still causes half damage (like some spell damage does) because you still made contact or required extreme evasive action. Missing by 10 or more is a clean miss with no damage, except to the attacker’s confidence. Natural 20 moves you success up on step, and natural 1 moves it down one step. This means that most attacks aimed at a target will wear them down. Many things, including dodging, armor deflection, and luck can be used to describe this slow erosion. When you drop to zero, you’re not necessarily unconscious, but you’re incapacitated and have taken a significant wound. You get one level of exhaustion from dropping to zero, and another for each failed death save. You recover exhaustion levels at a rate of one per long rest (per day), and while you have any exhaustion, the effect of any HP healing is halved. You don’t get free HP for a long rest, but you can spend as many hit dice as you like. In a 30-minute short rest, you could only spend one hit die. I would really like spell slots to require hit die expenditure, but I’m still working on that.

So here's and idea I've used as a DM: When a larger massive creature such as a giant strikes a medium sized character with a massive sword you'd think the sword would simply carve them In half and also send them flying several feet away. So when a massive creature hits a players AC and exceeds the AC by a factor of 5, 10, 15, 20 etc (depending on the size difference) the creature deals damage as usual and then the player must makes a CON save vs. that damage (base damage of a Hill Giant is 18) depending on the success or fail of the save, the character can be slammed away (possibly taking extra damage if they hit something else) the character can gain the prone, stun or incapacitated condition or if they completely fail the role ( failed by 10 or more ) then they are brought to zero hp and begin dying I apply this rule to falling great distances as well, a character that falls 40-50 or more feet doesn't simply take some damage, get up and keep on going.

Macchiato Monsters has a related mechanic I really like. 1. If you hit a monter, it loses its attack. 2. If you don't hit a monster, it hits you automatically. Zero Whiff Factor. It also explicitly states that HP aren't flesh points, but represent your ability to stay in the fight through stamina, positioning, and luck. My current house rule is to say that first 50% of HP are just that, never wounds. Below that you accumulate minor wounds while losing ground and getting exhausted, while your last HD represents major wounds.

I really like the second idea to roll straight damage without to-hit-roll. But. I found out that it wont work really well for the higher levels. It may be great for the first two or three levels, but then ac becomes too low for spells, while too high for standard weapon attacks. If I tossed an enemy with 12 ac against my players and the fighter would attack three times with his sword, even with +4 modifier he could hit only when criting. How would you deal with this issue?

a fun system a lot of rp heavy games have are tags. instead of hp, you have tags that define what damage your body's taken. some spells or moves add the "nausea" tag or "asleep" tag to your character, whereas regular weapons might add the "wounded" or "bleeding" tag. tags can be super temporary like "proned" or nigh permanent like "dismembered", then, either to the dm/player's discretion, accruing enough tags would effectively take you out of the encounter, even if you're not dead, OR with something like a "mortal tags" system, you could track a number of tags that threaten your life separate from other tags "bleeding", "punctured lung", "left leg inoperable", and if you accrued enough of those you could pronounce your character dead.

I ran a hack of D&D 4E that did something similar to getting rid of hit points. Basically you had three innate hits before you were taken out, and then armor added hits (one for light, two for medium, three for heavy, one for shield). So fully armored you'd have seven hits. Then spells that granted armor just added a 'magic' hit to the lineup. Really horrible attacks might do two or even three hits at once. Some things, like poison, passed through your armor hits and went straight to magic and your innate three. Then as you leveled up, some classes (fighter) got more hits steadily, while others (wizard) got more hits occasionally (every 3 or 4 levels). Anyway, with some hacking it worked great, and made a lot of sense to people who were new to RPGs.

These are cool mechanical ideas, that I can totally see working well in their own RPG system. Trying to cram them into DnD seems like it would get messy really quick, though. First of all, making most attacks deal the same 1 HP of damage would kind of exacerbate the already all-powerful Action Economy. Fighting eight CR 1/4 skeletons in 5e is typically going to be way more dangerous than fighting a single CR 2 Ogre (despite the two fights ostensibly having the same challenge rating), because you're getting attacked eight times per turn with the skeletons, and only once per turn with the Ogre. If everything is now dealing 1 damage and everyone has around 5 HP, 8 skeletons is now a horrifying mob of destruction, and an ogre is a complete joke that might go down in the first turn. Even if you say that big scary creatures like Ogres or Giants deal extra damage to compensate, it's still not even close. Class features would similarly be really hard to balance. Martial classes tend to get Extra Attack at level 5, whereas cantrips increase in damage. At first you could say that martials get a second attack as normal and cantrips go from 1 to 2 damage, but what happens when cantrips level up again at level 11? Do they go to 3 damage, and then you have to figure out a way to give martials more damage to compensate? Barbarians get a slight damage bonus when they rage. Do you translate this to a +1 bonus, giving them a whopping potential damage output of 2x2 per turn, massively buffing them? Or do you cut the damage bonus entirely because it's not big enough to translate to a +1, nerfing the class by quite a bit? What about Sneak Attack? Starting off with a +1 damage on sneak attacks sounds fair, but it's supposed to increase by 1d6 every other level. Do you increase it by +1 every two levels, resulting in an absolutely busted amount of damage? Or do you cut back on how often sneak attack increases, nerfing the class significantly? Spells would be an absolute nightmare. Fireball is already renowned for being intentionally overpowered, and with this new system...It still would be, if all damaging spells deal the same damage and just differ in AoE. Inflict Wounds is a single-target attack spell that deals 3d10 damage, obviously quite a bit more than a base-level cantrip. So I guess we can say it deals 2 damage, since you're using a spell slot to cast it. But then you hit level 5, and suddenly Fire Bolt and Chill Touch and Ray of Frost are also all doing 2 damage (unless they aren't, at which point cantrips immediately fall off at level 5). So I can cast Fire Bolt to deal 2 damage at range, cast Chill Touch to deal 2 damage at range with an additional effect, cast Ray of Frost to deal 2 damage at range with an additional effect, or I can use a spell slot to cast Inflict Wound to deal...2 damage. In melee. With no additional effects. In practice, truncating everything to bits of 1 would, counterintuitively, make everything way more complicated. It would be really neat to see a unique game system that uses these ideas. But to use them in DnD you have to look at every individual class feature/spell and individually balance them to make the new system work, or make blanket changes that would immediately throw the balance out the window. At that point, it's worth considering why you're playing DnD, and not a different system.

I've experimented with renaming Hit Points to Hero Points with some success. Basically, your Hero Points are a marker not of your ability to be hit repeatedly and not sliced to ribbons, but a numerical representation of how heroic you have become i.e. Battle Hardened - which means you, depending on your class, learn how to shrug off, mitigate, power through or otherwise partially defend against blows that would have killed you at level one. In this way, I don't have to play the "The Fire Giant slices you with his great sword but somehow you stay standing because HP" and can instead say "The Fire Giant swings his sword down but you manage to parry at the last moment, turning it into a glancing blow - though even that rocks you backwards, leaving you vulnerable." - and only if they hit zero do I specify the creature actually caused a fatal injury at last. Likewise with AC, the enemy might "miss" but I will describe it based on the character. If they are a Paladin in Heavy Armour then the arrow bounces away harmlessly, or if they are a Rogue they deftly dart away from a blow, and if they are against a goblin they might just get lucky, but against a very skilled opponent I rarely let them outright "Miss" as it is narratively jarring.

My friend and I have had many discussions on this subject. I basically look at hit points like "plot armor" because that's really what it is. Its a measure of how difficult you are to kill. If you're up against an enemy with a 1d6 damage attack, that's an average of 3.5 "damage" per successful hit. If you have 14 HP, then taking an average 4 of those hits drops you to zero. Losing HP represents your enemy otherwise fighting well, but you get a lucky dodge in, or you deflect the blow with your buckler at just the right time. Its your "Time To Kill" metric. I have my own system that I like to use, somewhat adapted from a FUDGE wound system. All characters have 3 "HP" which are their actual health. Losing 1 results in minor stat reduction, losing 2 results in major stat reduction, and losing 3 means you are dead. Any HP beyond this 3 is "plot armor" and more or less represents minor scratches, near misses, lucky dodges, etc. Your "plot immunity." The more skilled you are at fighting, the more "plot armor" you have. The tougher you are, the more "plot armor" you have. I usually start characters at 5 total (3 HP + 2 Plot Armor). This system is nice because it also gives you a degree of damage scaling. Against a healthy person with 3 HP, 1 damage is enough to wound, but not kill. 2 is enough to seriously wound, but not kill. 3 is enough to kill. Against someone with 3 HP + 2 Plot Armor, 1 or 2 damage is negligible because you dodged it or blocked it or whatever, but 3 damage would wound you because you managed to dodge but it still got you right in the shoulder, now its harder for you to swing your sword and if you take another hit like that you're certainly dead. The only rolls you really need are checking for success and failure. At that point you can play the entire d20 system with exactly one d20.

A Warhammer 40k RPG I play pretty much does both of these things to some extent. It's called Dark Heresy, and while you still roll to hit, you have to roll *under* your score for that skill and count any modifiers. Basically means that no matter how heavily armoured your target is, your skill with the weapon is consistent. You have very low HP (or wounds as they're called) throughout most of the campaign since it doesn't really increase as a given like in DnD. Armour and toughness just reduce the amount of damage you take to potentially 0. This also lets damage numbers stay pretty low and make armour piercing an actual mechanic. God, I could go on about that game. The magic system is amazing too.

I've thought about this a lot, and have designed and tested out a number of different systems (including fully narrative systems, hitpoint-less systems, and various hybrids). I'm just going to address hitpoints here, as armour is a different topic that needs its own discussion. The fundamental issue with HP is that what they are trying to model is human injury. And the fundamental issue with human injury is that the real mechanics of getting hurt are very contingent and non-linear. People can sometimes survive being riddled with bullets or stab wounds, and yet frequently die from slipping in the shower. People also tend not to die all at once outside of certain, specific scenarios. Instead we get injured, lose some capability and then become incapacitated later on due to trauma/blood loss. This makes sense when you think about it - we're machines with a bunch of important parts (our organs), each of which has its own failure points and knock-on effects to the whole. HP, on the other hand, model the body as a sort of potato-like structure - your character is perfectly functional until a magic threshold is reached, after which they die. One approach that I've used is to have gated states that the character moves through as they lose hitpoints - after half your HP are gone, your character is wounded and loses stats. At one quarter they're grievously injured, lose even more capability, and will then continue to lose HP until stabilized. The results are more realistic, but this is obviously a bit fiddly to implement and can be frustrating when you spend half a scenario watching your character bleed out as they crawl towards help. I'd recommend it more for a grim-n-gritty setup where frustrations like these are part of the intended experience. Another approach is just to re-define terms - you have a more or less sharply limited HP pool, and characters who run out are "knocked out of the fight" by default rather than being killed. Being KO'd means that you're either down for the count, are too busy tending to your own wounds to deal with anything else, or are scared enough to run away or surrender (options to be provided as appropriate). So a fireball doesn't just blow up goblins, it also terrifies them - with the results being handled using either a narrative or mechanical system as to whether they fall down dead, lie very still on the floor and hope that nobody notices them, stop-drop-and-roll, or run for the hills. This adds a small extra system (a way to manage outcomes when HP hits zero), but opens up a bunch of narrative potential and resolves some common-sense questions about why two identical-looking characters might have order-of-magnitude differences in HP. Finally, I've had some success with having a damage model where weapons deal both direct and indirect damage. The direct damage just lowers HP as per normal, while the indirect damage goes into a "catastrophe" pool. When the catastrophe pool equals or exceeds a threshold (e.g. the remaining HP pool), then the character suffers from a catastrophe of some sort that puts them out of the fight without killing them. This can again be anything from passing out due to blood loss, to crapping their pants and running away. Every character with catastrophe points on them then has to make a check at the end of the turn (for instance, a simple 1D6 with multiple options depending on outcome). This is loaded so that catastrophes can self-resolve, but are more likely to snowball as the game goes on (eg: a roll of 1 adds two points, 2-3 adds one point, 4-5 do nothing and 6 removes 1 point). The nice thing about this approach is that although it adds two new systems (tracking and managing catastrophe points, and resolving outcomes from them), it also opens up a bunch of new scenarios that make the overall experience more realistic without futzing with the core systems as well. For DnD, which is already loaded to the gunwales with systems, it's probably not a good fit. But for a ground-up system that already uses a lean-n-mean HP-lite approach, I think it adds a bit of flexibility in terms of outcome.

One of my favorite systems uses armor more like health, where taking damage from an opponent adds up against armor value until either the attacks cease from the opponent or the armor is overcome, after which the damage resets. If the damage exceeds what the armor can take, the character receives a wound. Wounds count against a very small pool, in the 5 to 6 range for average characters, and don't regenerate until the character gets medical attention or sufficient time passes. Crits bypass armor to deal a wound and have additional effects. Very cool system, there were so many nice quality of life features

I’m actually in a campaign where we have a lot of optional/homebrew rules. One of them actually being damage reduction from armor, but we still have normal ac. So you still have to roll high enough to hit, and roll high enough to get good enough damage to kill. This sounds like it makes the campaign more difficult, but we have combat rules that make attacks more devastating, and the reduction to damage sometimes is a life saver.

Mathematically, one advantage to having a separate attack and damage roll is that keying the overall effectiveness of the attack on two dice somewhat puts you on a bell curve of effectiveness, making the overall attack less linear. Of course, because one roll is a binary yes/no (with the added complexity of a crit) and the second is a linear effectiveness roll, it doesn't quite play out that way. Making your attacks be keyed off a singular die roll will make the results more linear and swingy. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it's something to keep in mind. Randomness favors the underdog, and in almost every fight, the PCs are expected to win. Both of these rules are similar to two from 3.5's Unearthed Arcana. One had a system where you'd pick up "injuries" each time you got hit. It was kind of fiddly and I didn't use it because I didn't feel it added more to the game than just having HP. The other was using AC as DR. They still used two separate rolls, though, so it wasn't the same as your idea. The big difference was that characters would be able to weather a "death of a thousand cuts" much better because each attack would be negated or heavily reduced, but powerful single attacks turned out to be more deadly because they would hit far more often and only have a small amount reduced.

The vast pool of HP characters accrue can feel a bit unrealistic, but then I remember we are playing a fantasy game and that it's ok. Then I remember there were other systems that worked differently. Rune Quest, used an armour absorption mechanic and players got to defend an attack with a parry or dodge roll.

So, as someone who runs Call of Cthulhu campaigns and been apart of DnD campaigns, I suggest a "major wound" system. It is similar to the Call of Cthulhu's, where a Major wound is whenever a character takes half of their max hp they have to make a con save to remain conscious (at least, in CoC that is the consequence). It could stumble, daze, stun or concuss them, whichever flavors better or whatever you decide, if a weapons size and strength of an enemy is really high, and a pc receives a major wound, they get literally bounced and be moved and forced prone (I.E. Zealot barbarian human gets hit by a giant twice his size and the weapon/form of attack is considerably bigger then him, he gets hit and his momentum slams him on the ground and he bounces up a little, or gets knocked back a few feet and skids on the ground and has to stand back up) CoC's large punishment for having a major wound is no healing when time passes, and a requirement to rest to heal and be attended by someone with First Aid or Medicine skills to accelerate the process and recover from the wounds. I imagine you could think of a lot of different things around the system as inspiration for a more realistic feeling of being smoted by a weapon your size.

Shadowrun 2ndEd had a hit pointless system. You had two 10 box tracks, one for damage and one for consciousness. Weapons and spells did damage levels of L (1 box), M (3 boxes), S (6 boxes), or D (10 boxes). For each two successes the attacker rolled, they advanced the damage level up one, up to D. Each weapon/spell had a Power Level like 12S or 6L. That number was the target number each of the target's Body dice (roll a number of d6 equal to you Body, explode dice on 6). For every 2 successes the defender scored they lowered the damage level (not boxes). So if weapon did 6L and the attacker got 4 successes the base damage level would be 6S. If the target rolled 6 successes the damage would be gone (S to M, M to L, L to none). It was a fantastic system.

These are valid questions to ask. The problem is (as others have probably mentioned) these are not minor tweaks or just ignoring features (like encumbrance or spell components) and so by the time you make all these changes to 5e to accommodate it, you aren't just playing homebrew 5e anymore. You're essentially inventing (or re-inventing) a new core combat system, and you'd probably be better off just changing the lore for another, higher risk combat system. For such sweeping changes, it's easier to change or ignore the lore of a combat system than to change every stat line in every book for every campaign session. If you want to tell high-risk combat stories with real danger and long-term consequences, choose another system. If you want to play 5e....then play 5e - with all its warts. It's a great experiment to play with, to be sure - the sort of experiment game designers at studios like WOTC undertake all the time. I'm just not sure it's a practical experiment for regular table play by the average DM and player group.

One of the homerules that I found on Reddit was "rolling for defense." The idea was, if I remember correctly, you subtract 10 from a characters AC to find out what their defense bonus was. So a character with 16 AC would have a defense bonus of 6. It was fun and kept the players engaged when the monsters attacked. Rather than them just answering to, "Does 17 hit?" Also, if the players rolled a natural 1 the monster critted; if they rolled a natural 20 the monster failed, as if it had rolled a natural 1.

Here's an idea from Monster of the Week/ MASKS - both are game systems that run on Powered by the Apocolypse Conditions, which are as follows - Afraid - lessens your ability to damage your enemy - Angry - lessens your ability to hit your enemy (basically, you're being reckless) - Guilty - lessens your ability to defend against your enemy - Hopeless - all rolls get a penalty until you regain hope - Insecure - lessens your ability to save against certain types of spells (for example charm person) (special) - Damaged - your character is seriously wounded and needs to either rest or have powerful magic cast to allow them to fight at full strength when all 5 or 6 are marked, your character is out of the scene

These are both fantastic ideas and I'm super glad I just happened to stumble upon this channel! For whatever reason, I never considered running either system this way, so I'm definitely stealing this moving forward, lol.

In Star Wars rpg based on 3rd edition DnD vitality and wounds represented HP. Vitality was explained as near misses or gazes that over time would reduce down and once the luck was over, you would take damage to wounds and possibly die.

How does the second option work with advantage/disadvantage in 5e? My group really wants to try it but aren't sure how to handle that.

The very first RPG i was a GM at was a derivation of the original "The Black Eye", in which you roll for attack, if you manage the defender rolls to defend (parry or dodge is a tactical choice), and then you roll for damage and see if you beat the armor score of the enemy. It sounds like a lot but I found it to play very nicely and it was way easier to describe the hits. It is done that way because the system wants each swing to have a roll, rather than doing exchanges, and takes a lot into account. I have also experimented with roleplaying without a rulebook, and thus without hit points. Since there is no armor class or score, in that case I do opposing rolls (with ""modifiers"" depending on how skilled the characters are supposed to be) if the attacker gets higher, the higher the difference, the more important the wound

I've always liked the wound system that Warhammer fantasy uses. It might be even more interesting to have temporary bolstered healing and permeant damage. It makes combat more deadly, but also raises tension - all the while reducing the amount of numbers to keep track of. Your body has a certain number of "wounds" it can take before you're out of commission, whether it be mental or physical - and you really cannot heal mental damage without a way to numb the pain - it would keep coming back unless there was a legitimately real way to cope. This also works in lieu of negotiations and charisma checks who roll social skills like with Intimidate, Charm, Bluff, Diplomacy. You can use said words to cut deep into the other person to get your point across, and still apply said "wounds" to the situation. It's exceptionally fluid depending on the situation. For instance - AC vs damage as opposed to the "to hit." This specifically helps deal with enemy mobs as opposed to one v one - allowing more epic mind theater. If combined with the "critical hit" system at the end of the video, it makes a lot of sense or how healing magic doesn't actually remove fatigue or restore blood, it just stops the bleeding and a poor roll on a willing target would cause further shock, but still stop bleeding. I think it makes things more fluid and interesting, allowing for greater storytelling.

Look into the combat rules in Savage Worlds. You will see that it is very much up your alley. They use wounds, instead of Hit Points, that when you suffer a wound, it cause -1 to all your rolls. To take a wound, an attacker must roll above the defenders toughness and armor. The first 4 points equal to or more than the toughness causes the victim to be Shaken, they will lose their next attack if they don't successfully unshake. The next 4 points of damage cause a wound, 8 damage causes 2 wounds, 12 points is 3 wounds.... PC all have 3 wounds in most games (with varying toughnesses). When you lose a wound you can spend a Benny (like an inspiration point) to "Soak" your wounds. This is done by rolling a Vigor roll (Constitution in D&D). If 4 or more, you soak one wound, for every 4 points you soak another wound. If you soak ALL the wounds dealt, you also were not shaken.

One system that did pretty great on it's damage/hp system is Shadows of Esteren. Step 1 : Roll attack vs defense, if it hits go to step 2 Step 2 : your attack roll minus the evasion is the base damage of the attack, then you add your weapon modifier and substract armor value. Apply damage to character. if I remember correctly, aside from some perks/class, you have 19 health points with negative modifiers as such : good : 5 points Ligh wounds -1 : 5 points Heavy wounds -2 : 4 points Critical -3 : 4 points Agony : 1 point (No malus because you are considered dying and have to roll to stay alive and not die from your wounds or get healed)

As a DM, I've done these things. No "to hit", just damage + Armor mitigates the damage. And I've also had armor count as a hit point buff, or temp HP. The player decides if the armor takes the hit or the character. If the armor gets to 0 HP, not only does it no longer function, but it makes all physical actions take a penalty. In prior editions, I just had it apply a roll penalty equal to its armor category (light = -1, medium = -2, heavy = -3). In 5e, I think I'd make it apply Disadvantage to any physical action. The main advantage to eliminating to-hit rolls is it speeds up combat. It also makes tank + sneak-attacker a far more important tactic. The tank (fighter, paladin, bear-druid, etc.) isn't expected to do much damage to a heavy-armor foe, but if they can hold attention while a sneaker gets in a multi-die backstab, then that makes both players feel like they seriously contributed to the battle.

I've thought similar thoughts. The way I house ruled it is if the the roll to hit is below your dex, the attack is a miss. If the roll to hit is above your dex but below your AC, the damage is halved and goes to your armor. Your Armor's durability is determined by the AC (example AC 15 means your Armor can take 15 damage before being damaged itself). If the roll to hit is above Dex and AC, you take full damage to your armor and if damage taken is greater than your AC durability, you lose 1 HP and your Armor is permanently damaged bringing your AC and Armor durability down by 1. I had a much more low magic, grounded type of game. Health was low and scarce. Level ups for HP were straight rolls, no averages. And armor did more than protect you, it could mean the difference between being alive and dead. I felt that 5e gave a lot more to the magic classes and this was kind of my response to it. I wanted to give melee strength based characters a chance to feel badass as well.

Interesting ideas worth looking at especially if you're trying to simplify the math and speed up the game with fewer rolls. That being said, it strikes me that if your biggest problem is just the description of how it plays out, there are other options for tweaking your descriptions. For example, a glancing blow doesn't always leave you undamaged, or damaged. IE: "The Fire Giant brings their massive great sword down upon you, you aren't able to dodge it, but your prowess in combat allowed you to side step (or slow with your shield?) the worst of the blow and it rebounds off your side. The pain and the cracking sound as it hit your armor was so intense that you aren't sure if those ribs are broken or just severely bruised, and something feels off with your hip. You're not even sure how you're still on your feet. Is it adrenaline, your commitment to protecting your friends, or divine intervention? Whatever the reason, you know you can't withstand another hit like that again." Obviously don't tell them they have definitely have a condition like a broken bone unless they actually have one, but we've all been in one of those instances where we're not sure if we've just done serious damage or not. Like just the other day when I sliced my pinky when washing a knife. I screamed like a baby and wondered if I'd need stitches, then watched as two small drops of blood formed and stopped. A bandage and pain equaling that of a paper cut for a day or two and now all that's left is a memory and a small line which will also fade in a couple more days. One possible fun thing (as long as the percentiles and consequences aren't too punishing) is to keep tally on the side during combat of all the close calls (hard hits and crits?) the player has had against them, and roll to see if they have a condition at the end of combat, after the adrenaline has worn off would make sense thematically and keep it from interrupting the gameplay. Try to go light on it, think minor sprains, like a mild limp until the next short rest reducing your speed by 5 ft unless you take a point of damage, or your wrist feels off, -1 to all attack or (not and) damage rolls (or with a shield reduce but don't eliminate the AC?). All sorts of fun could be had here and your players will probably start to feel a new sense of realism if they're limping after a hard fight until the next rest. But again go light. You don't want them to feel punished too often or heavily, no missing limbs or things that require restoration (on that note, maybe if it's light enough it can be healed with a healing spell instead of waiting until next rest). And remember to keep things balanced as they begin to be more haggard throughout the day. Also, if your doling out these conditions to players you should probably apply to monsters in the campaign as well (this goblin is nursing a limp from the ambush earlier in the day, and the other had his hand hit hard by that merchant making him less likely to get a good shot off on his bow). Disclaimer: I've not DMed a lot, and have never tried any of this myself, so experiment at your own risk and take it all with a huge grain of salt.

The Forged in the Dark system uses a system of stress and wounds. A player has the choice to gain stress instead of taking damage and after taking a certain amount of stress the gain a detriment of some kind. While the can take a certain number of light wounds, heavy wounds, and one critical wound before dying. If they need to take a light wound but have already taken two they put the light wound in a heavy slot. The system itself doesn’t use any kind of roll for enemies hitting the player usually though.

Best system without HPs I've seen was a "Wounds System". You (as normal human) have a set of possible wounds you can take by severity: 4 scratches, 3 light wounds, 2 heavy wounds and 1 deadly wound. You have a target number for each wound severity, depending on your toughness and durability (like 2 for scratch, 5 for light, 10 for heavy, 20 for deadly and like 30 for death). Now, when you get a hit you do not subtract the HPs. You take the most severe wound that target number is less or equal to damage dealt. If you have no more room for wounds of such severity you gain a more severe wound instead. When you have no more room for a deadly wound you become dying. This way you can take many light hits, but go down with one heavy hit. In the original system (magic + guns) there were penalties attached to each wound severity (no penalty for scratch), and you only suffer the penalty for the one most severe wound you have. Each wound reminds you of a hit it has been dealt with, making them much more personified. Same way you have to heal each wound separately, or some healing magic can lesser each wound severity by one (erasing scratches). Some creatures have greater target numbers, representing their toughness. Some creatures have different amounts of wounds representing their durability and different physiology. Some can even miss a place for wounds of some severity entirely. Like a zombie can only have scratches he does not care about (almost every hit is a scratch for him as he has no vital organs) or deadly wounds that cripples him or kills outright (like losing a limb or having his head destroyed).

Shadowrun gives you hit points equal to 8+1/2 your Body attribute. On a hit you roll your Armor + Body in dice to reduce the damage. If your soak roll reduces the incoming damage to 0, you don't take any HP damage. Every 3 points of damage to your HP, and you take an additional -1 dice to all rolls (except soak rolls).

I dk about that. In the first case, if you get hit by a giant's huge greatsword will you lose just 1hp? And how does your character's resilience go up as you level up? And how can you do more damage? And in the 2nd case, spells that deal let's say psychic damage should ignore armor class and be defended against by intelligence? Should characters have a physical and magic AC like in some video games?