Dark Souls bleed damage as character HP
Just a random thought that I will be exploring and posting about. This was prompted by listening to yet another XX hour dark souls analysis. In the video the 'bleed damage' was brought up, and I remember liking it quite alot.
Most importantly - bleed could work as character HP!
As a summary, bleed damage fills up a bar, and when the bar is full, the 'bleeder' takes a huge chunk of damage. Otherwise, the bar slowly goes to 0.
A nice example is here:
Here is my proposal:
- Characters can have up to their fortitude, constitution, strength, or whatever 'body' stat that produces a number between 4 and 8 roughly. This number is their maximum bleed value.
- If taking damage, damage increases the current bleed level.
- Once max bleed is reached, you lose a 'level of health' (detailed below). This should be any significant status or indication of bodily integrity.
- Bleed slowly goes away, such as out of combat or after a few minutes.
Character 'health levels' could be the following:
- Normal (100% capability)
- Bloody
- Deaths door (Maybe give some cool 'land stand' type bonus)
- Dead (Dead)
I imagine these health levels to remain fairly sticky. Going from bloody to normal may take days.
Some benefits from the top of my head:
- This nicely gives us an 'encounter' HP that basically most traditional RPGs inadvertently have through rules such as short resting, potions, etc.
- Adding numbers up as you get damaged is easier than subtracting from your HP.
- Keeps HP bloat fairly flat
- Gain cool numbers usable elsewhere in the system from your bleed (healing, using the current bleed as some sort of bonus or penalty).
I am not sure on a few things still - should bleed carry over across levels, is this faster or cooler, what can be added to justify its inclusion over standard HP, and what can those health levels do?
Hopefully I find answers in the next few posts.