Hit Points, Body Points and Healing
Hit Points (HP): Hit Points are determined by character class as in the standard rules. If Hit Points reach 0, the character is unconscious and begins to take severe physical injury. Further damage, including any remaining points of damage the attack that reduced hit points to zero, directly reduces Body Points. Hit Points represent stamina, luck, minor cuts and scrapes, etc. Optional: To avoid confusion, “Hit Points” may be renamed “Fatigue Points.”
Body Points (BP): All characters have 10 Body Points. If Body Points reach 0, the character is dead. Each point of body damage a character has suffered gives a -1 to all attack, success, saving, and similar D20 rolls.
Option: Body Points for Fighting Classes equal 10 + (Level/2) (round down, maximum 20). Body Points for Arcane Classes equal 10 – (Level/3) (round up, minimum 5). This has fighting classes slowly becoming tougher while arcane classes lose physical conditioning as they become more magically powerful.
Critical Hits: Natural attack roll of 20 (that would otherwise hit) is automatically a critical doing maximum damage and doing a number of body points damage equal to the number of damage dice rolled (normally 1). Most monsters do not have body points, so a critical hit will do maximum damage plus a normal damage roll to them and cause them to lose their next attack.
Recovering Hit Points: All characters recover all hit points after six hours of total rest. If a character has lost Body Points due to wounds, only 50% of total hit points lost are recovered per six hours of rest.
Healing Body Point Damage: Body points lost recover at a rate equal to the character’s CON Bonus (minimum of 1 point regained) per full day of complete rest. If a character with up to 50% Body Point damage (up to 10 points of BP damage if base 20 BP is used) performs more than very light activity or careful, slow travel during a day, he has a 50% chance of losing an additional body point. If a character with more 50% of Body Point damaged (11 or more points of BP damage if base 20 BP is used) does anything other than rest quietly in bed during a day, he has a 50% chance of losing an additional body point.
Healing Magic: Cure spells or their equivalent no longer affect hit points on characters (but continue to do so on creatures who only have hit points). A Cure Wounds I (or equivalent) will cure 1d2+1 Body Points. A Cure Wounds II (or equivalent) will cure 3d2+3 Body Points. In either case, 1 point will be cured per 10 minutes of rest after the spell is cast (up to the maximum the spell will cure), if the rest in interrupted any remaining points of healing are lost.
Bleeding (optional): A character who has been reduced to 0 hit points by weapon or other trauma-related damage will eventually bleed out and die if their wounds are not bound. A bleeding character must make a Save every minute or suffer one body point of additional damage. Binding wounds takes 1 minute per point of body damage taken, but no further bleeding rolls are needed (including while the wounds are being bound). Any healing spell cast on a bleeding character will effectively stop the bleeding.
Second Wind (Optional): Once per day, characters may regain 20% of their total hit points (round up) by resting in a safe place for an hour while eating a meal. This amount is reduced by 2 hp per point of body damage (to a minimum of 0 hp recovered).
Monster Body Points (Optional): Body Points should generally only be used for player characters and important NPCs. If the referee does not mind the added complexity, monsters may have Body Points as well. A monster’s Body Points are equal to twice the number of hit dice the monster has. This option is not recommended as it adds a lot of pointless bookkeeping for the referee to every combat. If the referee does not want to use this option, but still feels that the addition of Body Points gives player characters too much of an advantage over monsters, the referee may simply increase the HPs rolled for monsters by twice the number of hit dice the monster has.