The Rationale of Using Wound Points and Vigor Points in Role-Playing Games
I present an argument and suggest a variant for your use.
I have run Dungeons & Dragons and Pathfinder d20 role-playing games since I was 13, with some breaks from time to time as real life demanded my attention elsewhere - undergraduate school in the 1980s, Basic Combat Training, ROTC Advanced Camp, and Signal Officer Basic Course in the 1990s, re-evaluation of my life from 2016 to 2019, for example. I am taking a break now to devote my time and energy to writing and editing fiction and essays here on Substack, but I have recently been involved in playing a story-driven role-playing game online with some friends in Virginia. They are trying to use my alternate Wound Points and Vigor Points system, but they don’t have access to the codified written rules. This article fulfills the purpose of explaining the reason for adopting such a system and outline how Wound Points and Vitality Points are supposed to work in my D&D 5th Edition based games (and by extension, theirs).
What Are Hit Points?
From the very beginning of role-playing games, hit points were a measure of the amount of punishment a player character can take before he or she croaks, gives up the ghost, slips beyond the veil, etc. (dies). As level-based games like D&D add hit points as characters gain levels, it eventually becomes apparent that simulation is being left behind, as hit point totals bet insane. The first questions about hit points arose in the early 1980s, when player characters found themselves surviving 80-ft falls, picking themselves up, and dusting themselves off. And the first fix was written by Gary Gygax, with the explanation that when player characters fell into pits, off cliffsides, etc., the Dungeon Master was supposed to roll the damage as 1d6 per 10 ft per 10 ft fallen, but his editors thought he was using redundant text and removed the second 10 ft fallent, so the Dungeon Masters Guide printed falling damage as “1d6 per 10 ft fallen.” To explain how this was supposed to work, if a character fell 30 ft, the damage was supposed to be 6d6 - 1d6 for the first 10 ft, 2d6 for the second 10 ft, and 3d6 for the third 10 ft. Later, in the supplemental hardback book Unearthed Arcana was published, another fix was suggested: death from massive damage. If a character ever took more than half his hit points in a single blow, he needed to make a death save or die. Players accepted these fixes and moved on.
In Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition, as characters rose in levels, they eventually accumulated over 100 hit points. As I DMed lower-level adventures and rarely had player characters reach 10th level or higher, I only saw players bring these massively stacked characters to games at conventions. I accepted the way hit points worked until I started to see convention play at high levels in the RPGA run Living Greyhawk campaign, a massive multiplayer game enjoyed by the RPGA community all over the world. I started to notice that the game slows down immensely at higher levels, as it typically took up to an hour to resolve only four rounds of combat, leaving players waiting excessively long times for their turns.
Over the years, many explanations of what hit points are attempted to justify the exponential hit point accumlulation by expressing that hit points are an abstraction that accounts for a combination of physical fortitude and luck. So, if a 40-hit point hero takes 10 hit points of damage, most of that damage represents luck, and a “hit” as rolled by an attacker was actually a near-miss. OK, fine. I let that go until I ran a high-level campaign during the Covid-19 lockdowns.
The last straw for me with regard to high-level hit point totals arrived as I was preparing a mook encounter for a party of four 12th-level player characters. I was using a rule at the time to keep combat online simple by placing no more than six enemies into any single encounter. Since I was trying to present a Challenge Rating 13 encounter, my mooks were CR 9 creatures with over 100 hit points each. I knew this would result in an insane hour-long slobberknocker, which was not my goal. I looked around for alternatives.
The Pathfinder Role Playing Game presented the first alternative: Wounds and Vigor. The basics of the system is that Wound Points are calculated by doubling your Constitution score, and your Vigor is determined by adding maximum possible hit points for your hit die type at first level, and then rolling your hit die type each level thereafter and adding to the total (don’t add Constitution bonus, as this is figured into your Wound Points). This was a reasonable system, and I immediately set my Hero Lab encounter designer to use this system. It is easy enough to translate to Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition, the new Tales of the Valiant Role-Playing Game by Kobold Press, and ENWorld’s Advanced 5E. Unfortunately, none of the character sheets published by the publishers of any of these games accommodate this system, which in my mind is better, and here is the reason for it.
In the Wounds and Vigor system, the abstractions of physical endurance and luck are tracked separately. Wound Points represent actual punishment your character’s body can take. Vigor represents luck. Generally, when a character is hit, the first damage he takes comes from Vigor, as player characters enjoy a certain amount of “plot armor.” When Vigor runs out, then damage comes directly off Wound Points. One exception is when a character suffers a critical hit. Rather than doubling the damage as previous rules systems have outlined, all the damage is applied directly to Wound Points.
Additional Options
I know that these role-playing games are fantasy games, but the movies I watch are fantasy, too, and they don’t let go of the premise that the human body can only take so much punishment before it is forced to struggle just to move, and painfully at that. It always bothered me that hit point totals could reach 0 and below (I used the negative 10 hit point rule where characters that reached negative hit points bled out at 1 hit point per round until they reached -10, at which point, they died), receive a quick cure light wounds to return to 2 or 3 hit points, and get back up to start fighting again. If you think your characters should demonstrate the same impairments after being knocked to low hit point thresholds just like the movies, try using this optional system suggested by the Pathfinder SRD and apply wound conditions that confer penalties to speed and disadvantage to characters who have been severely injured until they undergo a long rest. Similarly, with all the abstractions of simply tracking hit point totals, when a character takes Wound Point damage, determine what part of the body is wounded. Depending on the severity of the wound, the character could lose the use of an arm or leg, which could affect weapon use, shield use, or movement. Apply temporary penalties to Dexterity, disadvantage to saves and checks - be a DM and use your best judgment. Since 1970, that’s what a game judge has been for.
In the d20 era, when D&D 3.x, various d20 systems, and Pathfinder RPG used nonlethal damage, I implemented this rule you might be interested in trying if you still use this kind of damage: if you take real hit point damage and a cleric casts a cure spell on you, you aren’t instantly restored all that hit point damage. Instead, the cure converts your damage to nonlethal damage, which stabilizes your character if he or she has fallen into negative hit points. Your body is still impaired until it is treated and you get 8 hours (or a long) rest. When all hit point damage is converted to nonlethal damage, excess hit points restored by the die roll of a cure spell are then applied to the nonlethal damage.
In Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition-derivative RPGs, characters brought to 0 hit points continue to suffer penalties and disadvantages to checks, saves, and attack rolls after receiving healing until they rest.
Optional Wound Point Factors
For additional detail, you can use a character’s weight and frame to further modify a character’s Wound Points. This depends entirely on how much work you want to put into refining these numbers. Two additional factors need to be determined. First, use the Height determination method of your role-playing game to determine whether your character’s Height is considered taller or shorter than the mean height for your race or lineage (or whatever you are calling your species). Characters in the lower 30% Height assess a -2 to their Wound Point total. Characters in the upper 30% Height add +2 to their Wound Points.
Frame is determined by adding Strength and Constitution scores and dividing by 2. Then, subtract 10 and divide by 2 again. The resulting number, rounded down is the Wound Point modifier for Frame. Add this modifier to your Wound Point total.
For example, your character is average Height with a Constitution of 15 and a Strength of 13. Your Wound Points before modification are 30. After adding 15 and 13 together and dividing by 2 (28/2 = 14), subtract 10 (resulting in 4) and divide by 2. The modifier is +2. Add this to your Wound Points. Your character has 32 Wound Points.
If you are using a system based on Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition, such as Tales of the Valiant or Advanced 5E, it is likely you won’t come to a value higher than 20 given the limits on ability scores.
This article is still a draft mode of a rule I have been using informally for a couple of years with the group I game with. I intend to refine it, but you, dear subscriber, can help in this effort. Comment and share with your friends. This publication is free and intended to be a contribution to a community interested in making their role-playing games better. Help me grow this publication, and I’ll keep cranking out my ideas for everyone.