If you’re walking in on the middle of the advanced fantasy dungeon series, there’s an index here.

The core text attempts to make combat chaotic, dynamic, vivid and simple. This doesn’t describe a war of attrition. Given there’s no definition of HP in second edition, let’s define it as energy, taking inspiration from Oh Injury. They can be Hero Points, Horsepower, or (I think my favourite, because when you’re out you’ve “lost heart”) Heart Points.

You can spend an amount of HP determined by the GM to perform a stunt or action to avoid injury.

Being reduced to 0 HP is no immediate effect. When you sustain an injury and have no HP remaining, you die. At the GM’s discretion, you can take a permanent injury instead of dying. Roll on the permanent injury table.

If an attack doesn’t cause damage, or causes an effect in addition to damage, for example a ghoul’s paralysing claws or wrestler’s grapple, you can’t spend HP to avoid the effect, but you can spend HP to avoid the damage.

In combination with our rules for saving throws and armour, an example of play would look like this:

“The grim-faced orc tries to spill your guts with their axe!”

“I raise my shield to block it – but I failed my save vs steel!”

“The axe whistles past your shield and you feel the wind against your belly!”

“I leap back and block with my sword!“

“That’ll cost 1d6+4 HP!”

“Yipes, I only have 6 HP left, I can’t take that risk. I spin around, putting a chunk of my armour squarely in the path of the axe.”

“Your armour takes 1d6+4 damage instead, and now it’s your turn. What do you do?”

Now, with the addition of negotiation around individual moments of combat, it becomes more fluid and more like the example given in the DMG. The mechanic fills your turn with action, when you hit 0 HP, you don’t die, you may succeed your saves (which are suddenly save or die!), or your armour may be smashed from your body before you finally succumb (which is pretty cinematic imo), and you still may take a permanent injury instead of die! Lots of drama for a simple, three-layer defence mechanic.

We’ll need an injury table, but there are hundreds of those, so that won’t be a problem.

This has been a part of the Advanced Fantasy Dungeon Series! Let me know your thoughts on defending yourself, if there are questions left unanswered, whether I’ve overlooked anything glaring, or anything of the sort!

Idle Cartulary

20th April 2022