Since the hit points in OL are treated as an abstract measure of being able to project your presence onto the battlefield, I thought it might be less confusing for new players to use terms which better reflect that. I would rename “hit points” to “endurance”, “damage” would become “exhaustion”, and “lethal damage” simply “damage”. This way, a successful attack wouldn’t “damage” and opponent, but “exhaust” them (unless a d20 exploded). I would just track the exhaustion and damage as separate quantities and introduce a rule that if sum of exhaustion and damage reaches the endurance, a character falls unconscious. Of course, the sum can never exceed the endurance, and damage takes precedence over exhaustion (meaning: if endurance is 20, damage is 5, exhaustion is 15, and 5 damage is dealt, then the character has 10 damage and 10 exhaustion).
I think this would better bring across the idea of what hit points mean in OL. What do you think?
I like the idea of calling them other things. I always hate it when I say damage to a player cause its not really damage and then i always try to change what i said to something else. sadly after so many years of pathfinder and D&D, I’m used to calling it damage.
I think that’s a very reasonable change. During playtesting and development of Open Legend, there some other suggestions than Hit Points on the table, like Stamina for example, but the creator felt that renaming Hit Points might alienate players, especially the more experienced players who came from D&D and similar games.
That’s why Hit Points stuck as a term, but in retrospect, I think sticking to it was a mistake, as it has more confusion than it’s worth, as the players with preconceived notions often conflate it with how Hit Points work in those games, so a new term would have been appropriate in my opinion.
Though in original D&D hit points were an abstraction and not actual life, that was altered in later editions as I recall. Hit Points are better than Health Points, but they do carry that feel.
I don’t think Damage is a bad term necessarily, but renaming Hit Points to Stamina (or Endurance), and Lethal Damage could just remain the same honestly.
When players in my games are “hit”, I do my best to describe it as exerting themselves to just barely miss the blow. Only describing it as a hard it if lethal damage is applied. Like reddevil said, this can be easier “said then done” though, coming from other games.
Another term instead of Stamina could be Stress… though that usually works in counting up instead of counting down.