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Fate Points in BIND

Once trope from fantasy literature forever eludes fantasy RPGS: being wounded.

Of course, characters receive wounds, but only NPCs can *keep* wounds. Players who don't heal will perish in another battle or two, so every RPG system remedies this by allowing people to heal their damage through magic.

In BIND I solved this problem with Fate Points (FP). They represent luck, rather than health.

In theory, Gygax has stated that D&D's hitpoints also represent luck to some extent, but this distinction was never clear. When a level 1 thief and a level 8 fighter reach their last Hit Point (HP), they should seem equally damaged. However, one can get a Cure Light Wounds spell and walk away fine, while the other must receive multiple castings. One can wait a week and heal naturally, while the other will only heal after many months of rest. This system makes a mess of any narrative it touches.

When we separate health from luck, things become cleaner, and real wounds return to the narrative.

Consider the following example:

Alice has 6 HP and 10 FP. In combat, she takes 8 Damage, so she spends FP, leaving her with only 2. Close call! Time to run away.
At the end of the scene she regenerates 4 FP, putting her up to 6, but the enemy has found her, and attacks. She takes 10 Damage, so she marks off all her FP, then takes 4 HP Damage. She will be badly wounded for the rest of the adventure.
Once out and free, the party engage in less dangerous activities for a while. Alice has all her FP again, so she has 2 HP and 10 FP.

If the party get seriously wounded and enter combat, they will not return in a near-death state, but mostly 'healed'. However, despite being better on-paper, the character still retains a wound, and the rules retain a small nod towards this through their reduced HP.

Unexpected Bonuses

A nice side-effect of this system came up - nobody requires lots of HP, so nobody could claim immunity to being suddenly stabbed. In high-HP games, nobody could realistically imagine they could just wander up to a captain of the local guard and stab him in the stomach. He would have 'too many HP', so we know already that nothing short of repeated slashes with a sword could possibly kill him.

The distinction allows us to reserve FP just for players, and perhaps a few very importance NPCs. As a result, most antagonists have very few HP, which ensures combat stays short - nobody has to spend 45 minutes chipping away at an enemy with 300 HP.

Another nice rule tacked onto the side came when asking how to cast a fear spell on players. When enemies feel scared, their morale score reduces, but players don't have scores, and they should make their own decisions about what their characters do. After some thought, I decided that when players receive a *Fear* spell, they should lose all knowledge of their FP. The GM tracks it from then on, and the player only knows if they have lost HP or not.