4e Damage and Healing home-brew rules

One of my beefs with 4e is that it is too focused on the mini fights and the game is designed to go from one fight to the next while skipping that whole annoying story thing that is supposed to give the fights a purpose. One of the criticisms that I agree with is that healing is too quick. There are no consequences for getting beaten, stabbed, clawed and fireballed to within an inch of your life. Characters can heal at least 150% of their hit point total in one day.

I like getting into fights to have a little more bite. Combat shouldn't be the default option and my games are rarely dungeon crawls through some insane wizard's monster-laden basement.

While I really like the condition tracker from Star Wars Saga, I wanted to keep it a little easier for now plus add some long term effects, so here are the house rules I'll be trying out for damage and healing.


Fortunately my players are indulgent in my tinkering ways. Hopefully I make the stories worth putting up with me testing new rules variants on them constantly.