Rules: Wounds and Healing

Notes and references for alternative rules to wounds, hit points, rest and healing

Lingering Rules and Healing

Taken from a post on EN World: 5E Lingering Wounds Revamped

Suffer a Wound: On "Bloodied" (half hp) On receiving a critical hit On going to 0 HP (or taking damage at 0 hp)

A wound reduces your Max HD by 1. If your max HD is reduced to 0 and suffer another wound you gain a level of exhaustion that can only be removed by curing the wound.

All other game rules apply as well. Say you drop to 0hp with 0 HD remaining. You fall unconscious and gain a level of exhaustion.

Wounds can be healed (Max HD restored) at the rate of 1 wound per day of rest. Healing spells gain the ritual tag and when cast as a ritual, heal a number of wounds equal to the level of the spell slot used.

You could even drop the unconscious at 0HP rule, maybe impose disadvantage on everything instead, to completely get rid of "whack a mole"...the penalties for wounds are severe enough to encourage getting out of the fight. You could even introduce a severity level: Light wounds are the normal HP drain, Moderate wounds are one of the above conditions (crit, for example), Serious Wounds are two of the conditions (crit and bloodied, eg), and Critical Wounds are all three of the above (crit, bloodied, and 0 hp). Each wound takes a number of days of rest to drop by 1 severity (Critical wounds would completely heal in 3+2+1 = 6 days and would need a 3rd, 2nd,and 1st level spell slot healing ritual to be cured). Probably too granular for most.