HP is all fencing around and fun and games until somebody loses all of it, and a real "hit" is recorded at 0 HP.

But a drawback is that we lose out on the trope of being damaged but awake.

With our rules, you feint the same second you get your leg chopped off.

The same goes for the pretties, they're unhurt & happy & healthy until they go to 0.

Zombies have their own rules for this in the Monster Manual and there are also some traps and attacks that kill outright at 0 hp.

And of course when a pretty or other non-player-character dies the DM can choose to not roll death saves and instead have them die right away and that's what I usually do to save time. There's been some exceptions like Baba Lysaga from the CoS campaign or Imete and other friends of the hobos.

The DMG also gives the option that you might get lingering injuries on crits and when you roll 5 or lower on death saves. But that'd give way too many lingering injuries, wouldn't it?

This isn't a committed & recorded rule yet, just an idea I want to discuss with you, I want to hear if you think it's cool or not.

What if there were some amount of hp that counts as being hit & hurt but doesn't make you faint?

Like, say that a hit is registered at 3 hp instead of at 0 hp, like this:

Arrows are scratched when HP crosses 3,
when HP crosses 0,
when there is a death save failure inflicted.

But no more than 1 arrow per attack. I.e. if it goes from 9 to 0 (crossing both 3 and 0 in one shot) it's still only 1 arrow.

No more porcupine mode. Shooting extra arrows (that are easily recovered) are for battlefield control, or hits armor/fur, not direct hits to body.

No, spell slots for non-killing spells still count as normal. IDK why I had such a hang up on arrows specifically for a while.

Obv it's more complicated to have two numbers to remember, 0 and 3. That's a drawback for sure.

There might be slightly more lingering injuries with this scheme. If someone has 30 hp and they go down to 3, they get lingeringly injured, and then they go back up without ever having gone to 0, then that character has one more lingering injury than they would with the current rules.

One tweak would've been to give player characters (but not non-player characters) three extra HP. Then this rule change would be all upside for players; the fainting buffer is something that is added to their HP instead of taken from their HP. (In other words a 10 hp fighter would faint&get their leg chopped off if they take 10 damage in the old system, but with this "solution" they would be a 13 HP fighter and only get their legs chopped off, not faint, if they took 10 damage. IOW, same amount of damage taken, less effect.) However I think this is a pretty crappy solution because it has a significant drawback: it makes it easier on you guys and you are heroes, you can take on the world, you don't need a simplified baby-game w/ kittens&grandmas.

I don't think the slight risk of more chopped legs than before is such a big deal or would happen all that often compared to how cool it is to be able to survive tough situations. You got your leg chopped off, everyone else around you is dead, but you managed to stay awake through the pain, and kill your foe, and drag yourself to safety.

Obv a big benefit of the "you faint right away" current status quo is that gory combat details have been inherently veiled / offscreen to some extent. I.e. there hasn't been any Matthew Mercer or Lamentations of the Flame Princess style gore fests.

Three for the fainting number is just an example to make the proposal clear and understandable.

There are some different approaches to take.

I chose three because it makes sense across all levels. If the number was 10 then some level 1 characters would get their legs chopped off almost right away. If the number was 1 then it'd almost never happen.

A static number is great because it's easier to explain and teach to new players.

Maybe the number should be "your level" instead of "3".

Makes it more likely when you fight big tyrannosauruses and dragons etc that they might get hit a couple of times before going down. A 13 HD tyrannosaurus would have a fainting buffer of 13 making her more likely to stay awake through hits. Could be cool moments for you guys fighting her.

Tying it to HD would also give us the option to have it be tied to either max HD or current HD, the latter making it so that you're more likely to faint when you aren't well rested.

Makes sense flavorfully that high con means change to stay awake.