Less grit, through more grit, through less grit.

     So this is a little late, considering that this is the fourth overall entry in my series of house rules for Lamentations, but I should finally get around to writing a mission statement of sorts for the project. I love B/X and it's derivatives,in particular Lamentations of the Flame Princess, and part of the point of presenting these house-rules is to distance myself from the base edition of the game. I've pushed the system on to my sometimes unwilling players again and again, even as I continue to run 5th Edition as the main system for my weekly game. Though certainly not an uncommon experience for those of us in the OSR blogosphere, but i'm a late comer, being that i'm part of the third wave (DIY & Dragons does a great job of explaining it here) and have something of a different perspective on OSR. I feel that it would be helpful to share some of the structural changes I have made over the last few years to my personal B/X games, in the hope that I can both refine them and promote them to others.

          In this post I want to talk about Hit Points. There's always been a bit of back and forth as to what they actually represent: Are they emblematic of the heroic effort that higher level characters have access to? Are they literal representations of damage being done to the character's body? Are they abstractions, merely to show the back and forth of a fight until a fatal mistake is made? This ambiguity is one of the intriguing areas which has largely been unfilled by mechanics or extrapolation beyond a few attempts, most notably in WoTC's version of the Star Wars Roleplaying Game, as well as Cavegirl's Wolf-packs and Winter Snow

          This idea was borne out of the experience of running a number of hexcrawl styled games in Lamentations. I noticed that while the players did most everything they could to avoid combat, it quickly caused a cascade effect when they actually did engage in it. Even if they happened to survive, they were forced to in essence spend a few days (and subsequent encounter checks) recuperating before moving onward. Obviously this can appeal to many people, after all fights are puzzles, and shouldn't be trifled with, but on the other hand I don't think that the PCs should necessarily have to be punished with additional fights should they stop to replenish their resources after one. So instead of simply accepting this problem as it is or removing random encounters, I thought the best solution was simply to accelerate the rate at which hit points are restored. This of course presents another problem, if HP is restored too fast (as in the cast of 4th & 5th Edition D&D) then the risk associated with combat is blunted and player behavior becomes reckless instead of calculated.

          My solution is to split HP into two pools, each representing the differing interpretations of what hit points are:

          The first pool known as Moxie represents heroic effort and regenerates relatively quickly, the second pool is known as Trauma, and is meant to represent physical damage dealt to the PC. These pools are derived from the PC's Hit Die and Constitution score respectively. Moxie is equivalent to the PC's Hit Die, therefore a Fighter's Moxie per level is 1d8. Constitution is not added. Moxie restores at a rate of 1 HD per hour of rest, a full night's rest would allow a PC to regenerate up to 8 HD worth of Moxie. PC's always take damage to their Moxie first, Trauma is only dealt after Moxie is fully expended. Trauma is derived from the PC's Constitution Bonus at a 1:1 ratio, a PC with a +2 to Constitution would therefore gain 2 Trauma per level. PCs always gain at least 1 Trauma per level, even if they have a negative Constitution modifier. A PC reduced to 0 Trauma is dead. Trauma cannot be restored by any other means than natural healing, which may only be done in a completely safe environment such as a settlement. Trauma is restored at the same rate as natural healing as detailed in B/X or LotFP.

          Throughout my development I have waffled on including an injury table in some way, shape or form. The idea was that it would be triggered upon taking Trauma, causing you to take additional penalties. While I may revisit the idea in a later article, ultimately I decided against including it in this one because I wanted to test the first change fully before adding another variable, and because I feared it would be too punishing.