Health and Defense: Tracking enemy damage

As the GM tracks the status of several combatants, they track Wounds in a simplified way. Each enemy has a Health and Defense (HD) rating.

Health represents a creature’s ability to absorb damage. For example, a giant can shrug off many small stings from puny humans. A skeleton has no vitals and must be bashed apart before it stops moving.

Defense represents a creature’s ability to deflect damage. For example, the plate armor of a death knight or the overlapping scales of a dragon.

A creature with 3 Health and 5 Defense would be rendered like so: HD: 3/5

As a GM’s character is Wounded, the GM reduces either its Health or Defense points.

• Reduce the enemy’s Defense first.

• When there’s no Defense left, reduce the enemy’s Health.

• Piercing attacks bypass Defense and always reduce Health.

• When an enemy reaches 0 Health, they are at Death’s Door.

• Some creatures bypass Death’s Door and are simply destroyed. For example, neither a clockwork statue nor a zombie are living and would simply fall apart.