A backstab is just a damage boost. It is not an extra HP system.

Blackmoor. Had the hit location and HP system.

It allocated HP to body locations based on your total HP score. The head had 15%, the chest 80% the abdomen 60%, Arms 20% Legs 25%. Depleting the head or chest was a kill. Limb damage could cause DEX loss, etc.

Quote from: Omega;846206A backstab is just a damage boost. It is not an extra HP system.

Blackmoor. Had the hit location and HP system.

It allocated HP to body locations based on your total HP score. The head had 15%, the chest 80% the abdomen 60%, Arms 20% Legs 25%. Depleting the head or chest was a kill. Limb damage could cause DEX loss, etc.

D&D Assassination is a alternate wound system for sure. Bypass HP go directly to jail ... etc...
Weird that a sneak blow from an assassin can do that but a wizard can't replicate the effect with uber powerful magic....

Assassination properly applied only could happen if the opponent was completely unaware and the assassin was essentially unimpeded.

Bypassing HP in combat would be more like the poison rule.

Anyway, a nice thing about fatigue/damage rules (not sure if already mentioned) is it lets you use fatigue for spellcasting, and also you can do as in Dragonquest and have characters lose fatigue for strenuous activity such as forced marches while heavily encumbered.

The only thing I don't care for with the fatigue systems I've  seen is that they tend to use damage rolls for both "how fatiguing it is to get out of the way of X" and "how much it hurts to be hit by X". Maybe that makes sense under some abstract model but I don't find it intuitive.

On the other hand merely subtracting 1d6 fatigue per normal hit, and then full dice for a "real hit" isn't especially satisfying either.

Possibly it would be better to forget variable damage dice and go back to the weapon v. armor charts concept (which someone convincingly argued derive from Chainmail). (While you are at it, you can re-evaluate the need for hit dice and variable damage. Just have "fatigue" go up by a fixed amount per level, and successful attacks subtract either 1F or an amount equal to the amount by which they succeed, unless a crit occurs. A crit, or any damage beyond 0F, produces a roll on a wound table modified by target CON.)

(Caveat: deskchair warrior.)

Quote from: jibbajibba;846234D&D Assassination is a alternate wound system for sure. Bypass HP go directly to jail ... etc...
Weird that a sneak blow from an assassin can do that but a wizard can't replicate the effect with uber powerful magic....

Not in OD&D. It is a poison system which either insta-killed, or did bog standard HP damage. There was no extra wound system attatched to it. But the book did note that monks and assassins should use the alternative combat and HP system. The HP system was the one I noted above. It just spread the HP around to hit locations and replaced the standard HP system rather than adding a new layer.

Quote from: Hyper-Man;845863Is simpler actually better though?

For this, generally yes.