The Keep on the Borderlands: The Webcomic

Hit Points are an abstraction between physical robustness, luck, skill, and ability. In a basic round, a successful roll to hit with the subtraction of hit points is perfectly fine and there’s nothing wrong with it. But if you want to KNOW when your PC is actually hit so you can draw the scars on his character sheet, this is the system for you! In my more advanced and crunchy rules, Every PC has a stat called the Threshold of Pain. The threshold of pain is a percentage of total hit points that a character can sustain in a single attack without suffering a wound. Each time an attack receives a wound, there is a penalty to the character’s performance depending on where the wound has been suffered. When a critical hit causes a wound, a wound is applied, even if the hit point damage is below the Threshold of Pain. (i.e. The cut on the cheek that enrages the villain.) To determine the Threshold of Pain, consult the following tables:

Level	Fighter	Monk	Cleric	Thief
0	+0%	—	—	—
1-3	+2%	+10%	+0%	+1%
4-6	+4%	+20%	+0%	+2%
7-9	+6%	+30%	+2%	+3%
10-12	+8%	+40%	+4%	+4%
13-15	+10%	+50%	+8%	+5%
16-19	+12%	+60%	+16%	+6%
20-25	+14%	—	+30%	+7%
26-30	+16%	—	+38%	+8%
31-35	+19%	—	+46%	+9%
36	+20%	—	+50%	+10%

If the location of the wound is not predetermined from a Critical Roll or a Called Shot or something else similar, roll on this table to determine the wound location.

d100 roll	Location of Wound
01 – 17	Head
18 – 40	Body
41 – 55	Right Arm
56 – 70	Right Leg
71 – 85	Left Arm
86-00	Left Leg

The Effects of Wounds!
Based on the location of the wound, the following effects are applied.

General Wounds
A wound sustained to the whole body, like being caught in a Fireball spell, only count towards Overwhelming Pain.

Head Wounds
Wounds to the head can be avoided at a 25% chance if the PC is wearing a small helmet and 50% for a great helmet. (There, now your PCs have a reason to wear a helmet!) Each wound to the head has a percentage chance for rendering a PC unconscious. Look to the unconscious rules in pummeling section to work out some consistency there. (forthcoming as I record this)

Body Wounds
These wounds count only towards Overwhelming Pain.

Leg Wounds
Each leg wound effectively lowers a PC Dexterity by one point, with all penalties or loss of bonuses applied. Additionally, movement is effected by this chart:

Left Leg Wounds

right leg wounds	0	1	2	*3+
0	—	-10′(-5′)	-30′(-10′)	-50′(-20′)
1	-10′(-5′)	-30′(-10′)	-50′(-20′)	-70′(-20′)
2	-30′(-10′)	-50′(-20′)	-70′(-20′)	-90′(-30′)
*3+	-50′(-20′)	-70′(-20′)	-90′(-30′)	-120′(-40′)

Arm Wounds
The penalties here based on where the wound is and what you are currently using to attack. There are four charts. These penalties apply if the weapon is melee or ranged. Damage penalties can be waived for crossbows and firearms.(Crunch, crunch, crunch)

Arm Wounds and One-Handed Weapon – hit and damage penalties

Secondary Arm Wounds

wounds on primary arm	0	1	2	*3+
0	—	—	-1	-1
1	-1	-1	-1	-2
2	-2	-2	-2	-3
*3+	-3	-3	-3	-4

Arm Wounds and Two-Handed weapon – hit and damage penalties

Secondary Arm Wounds

wounds on primary arm	0	1	2	*3+
0	—	-1	-2	-3
1	-1	-2	-3	-4
2	-2	-3	-4	-6
*3+	-3	-4	-6	-8

Arm Wounds Two Weapons

Secondary Arm Wounds

wounds on primary arm	0	1	2	*3+
0	—	-1	-2	-3
1	-1	-3	-4	-5
2	-2	-4	-6	-7
*3+	-3	-5	-7	-9

Overwhelming Pain!
Should a character receive a great number of wounds, the pain will be so great that all they can do is collapse and scream and moan in agony. Each round a character is in a state of Overwhelming Pain, a successful constitution roll will allow the character to push past the pain and act.

Con Score	# wounds to cause O.P.
3-13	4
14-15	5
16-17	6
18	7
19+	Immune to O.P.

How to Avoid Getting Hurt
The more experienced a character is, the better they are avoiding getting hurt. This is not as powerful an ability as the saving throw, it is a simple chance of the negation of a wound. This will still cause the same loss of hit points, simply the wound itself will be negated. This cannot be rolled against any wound suffered by Critical Hit rolls.

Level	Fighters (Dwarves)	Monks	Everyone Else
0	5%	—	—
1-3	10%	30%	3%
4-6	15%	35%	6%
7-9	20%	40%	9%
10-12	25%	45%	12%
13-15	30%	60%	15%
16-19	35%	80%	18%
20-25	40%	—	21%
26-30	45%	—	24%
31-35	50%	—	27%
36	55%	—	30%

OK, I’m Wounded Now, How do I Heal from All This?
I’m glad you asked! Your character is a bloody mess and it’s time to recover. You should now have a record of your general hit point loss, and certain percentage of those lost hit points are wounds. As the character heals, all the wounds will heal at the same rate. In the case of natural healing at the default one hit point per day of rest, each wound will get one hit point healed at a time and only when all of the wounds sustained have been healed by one hit point can a wound get a second hit point healed. Hit point recovery is applied to wounds first before general hit point gain. The same effect happens through magical healing. Potions, magic items and the like all will heal all the wounds ‘simultaneously’. A wound has to be reduced to zero before it can be erased from your character sheet, even if it’s below your Threshold of Pain. The one chance you have to not be paralyzed by 4 or 5 ‘paper cuts’ is once a wound drops below your threshold of pain, you can make a Save vs. Paralyzation to ignore the effects of the wound. Otherwise the injuries, although not life threatening, are too painful for adventuring and more healing and rest is necessary. If a save vs. Paralyzation is successful, you keep the hit point loss, but you can erase the wound from your character sheet. The wound is now a ‘Hollywood injury’ and has no other mechanical effect on your PC.
A Cleric casting healing magic can focus the curing spells onto specific wounds. In this case the hp gain is applied to the wound the cleric wishes to heal in any manner the healer chooses. A healing skill roll which results in the recovery of hit points can also be applied to specific wounds based on the healer’s preference.

Errata
I generally make this PAIN rule set a PC-only rule. Only important Villain NPCs get this same level of detail. However, you can apply some reasonable Threshold of Pain number to any creature and apply these rules if you wish. I find that for NPCs and monster fights, ignoring Threshold of Pain and using the wounds applied for critical hits and the following simplified table works well.

# of wounds	Hit and Damage	AC	Movement
1	-1 / -1	-1	—
2	-2 / -1	-1	-10′(-5′)
3	-2 / -2	-2	-30′(-10′)
4	-3 / -3	-3	-50′(-20′)
5+	-4 / -4	-5	crippled